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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: This is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast.

[0:02] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that. Welcome back for part two of this wild and crazy talk with the men of the Hot Wing Kings, which was Katori Hall's play at the Signature Theater.

[0:19] Tonya Pinkins: I had a thought about education that I wanted to bring in because I was watching this documentary about racism in the evangelical church. And it was talking about how native voices have been pushed out of the evangelical Christianity sweeping across the United States and Canada.

[0:40] Tonya Pinkins: And they were talking about in Canada how these young Native girls were put into these re-education schools to be taught how to be Canadian. Right, to be taught how to be white Canadian.

[0:53] Tonya Pinkins: Correct. And they were divorced, they were separated from their families, they were separated from the people of the community. And yeah, teach the Indian out of them.

[1:02] Tonya Pinkins: And I don't think that that is different than the education system in the United States.

[1:07] Guest: Agree.

[1:07] Tonya Pinkins: For Black people, where it is trying to, by virtue of not whitewashing history, of literally just not teaching the history of this country. And I'm not talking about African American history, I'm talking about American history. You cannot divorce the two.

[1:22] Tonya Pinkins: To not teach American history as it is, not trying to protect white people's feelings as you teach it, but to teach it as it is and as it happened, and the effects that we're now dealing with, the reverberations of today, is to try and strip Black people of the knowledge that they are using to individuate.

[1:46] Tonya Pinkins: And then all of the ways that Black people are punished within the education system. With your son being an example, your story Tucson being an example. What that the numbers of Black people being punished at higher rates in education is ridiculous.

[2:09] Tonya Pinkins: But when you think about the unconscious and conscious ways that that happens, I started reflecting on that, Corey, and being like, okay, so unconsciously, you're not aware of your unconscious bias. You may be unconsciously punishing more because of stimuli that you've received over the course of your life that you're not aware of.

[2:29] Tonya Pinkins: But then on a conscious level, you could think you're doing the right thing. There's this young Black boy in this class, and I know the statistics for Black men. Oh, I'm gonna make sure that I punish him now. I'm gonna make sure that he gets that detention for pushing down a four-year-old who can barely stand, because this way when he becomes a big Black man, he's not gonna be violent.

[2:51] Tonya Pinkins: I'm gonna get that out of him. I'm gonna help to teach him that out of him now. I'm gonna help to get that out of him now. So there are conscious ways that people could think that they're doing the right thing. Or I'm gonna help usher him out of this. And that is the skin. That to me is super scary.

[3:04] Tonya Pinkins: That you think you're doing the right thing by traumatizing children. I don't know that they think about us like that. I don't think they think about us like that.

[3:13] Tonya Pinkins: I don't think so. Go on, Steve. Tell us about your childhood in Arkansas.

[3:16] Steve: I got folks from Arkansas.

[3:18] Tonya Pinkins: Four city.

[3:20] Steve: You're lying.

[3:21] Tonya Pinkins: No.

[3:21] Steve: Little Rock, Arkansas, born and raised.

[3:24] Tonya Pinkins: Born and raised.

[3:25] Steve: No.

[3:26] Steve: Now I will say that I often find that the South is a little less racist than the North. I remember the South is a little less racist. I grew up, there were two worlds in the South, Black and white. I don't remember Latino. You know, I don't remember nobody else but Black and white.

[3:43] Steve: I grew up, I wasn't raised by my mother or my father. My grandmother raised me. But it was in a very Blackness is all I knew. Two blocks down the street was Daisy Bates for me.

[3:53] Steve: I lived next to Daisy Bates. She helped integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Two blocks. So I remember my grandmother cooking food and I would, I didn't know who she was at the time, but I would go to her house to bring her food. I went to a Black church, grew up Baptist. All my environment was Black.

[4:12] Steve: All I saw was examples of Black middle class, you know what I mean? But to grow up Black, to grow up male, to grow up then gay or same-gender loving was the shift, you know what I mean? My environment didn't export religious-wise. I grew up thinking, you know, typical Baptist, it was a sin. You know, we want to get that out of you.

[4:34] Steve: So I learned very, very soon to, I remember coming home one day to my grandmother, and after having attraction for another young man, just didn't know it was wrong. I went like my beliefs, I like such and such. And she went, what? And I knew in that look immediately that that wasn't tolerated, accepted, and through the church.

[4:53] Steve: I went to church every Sunday in our church home and stuff was very important in our home. I knew quickly that that was part of myself that I had to hide. So I went on that hiding probably for up to 30 years.

[5:06] Steve: Wow. And how I did it was just I just wiped that part out of me. You know what I mean? I said, if I didn't have to acknowledge it, if I didn't, I was people would think, are you like asexual? Like, what's up with you? But I was just like, learn how to pass, learn how to be at my barbershop and not be detected, learn how to go in very hyper-masculine Black spaces and be accepted.

[5:28] Steve: That's what I learned to just mask up and learn how to survive and ignore any type of sexuality in my. That's why I'm so versed on it now, because it took until I got to college in grad school to have any sense of acknowledgement of who I was and trying to discover, and I went on a quest for all of that information.

[5:49] Tonya Pinkins: But that means through your adolescent years where we're exploring our sexuality, you had shut that down.

[5:55] Steve: I didn't do, do you hear me? Anything. I didn't do anything because I was fearful. I was fearful, and I was told very quickly that shouldn't happen, and that that could even be death. That's what I thought. And I grew up in the AIDS epidemic. I grew up in a point of lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, fear, shame, belittlement. That's how I grew up.

[6:18] Steve: So I just learned to just hide. Um, hide and pass. Um, then my grandmother would raise, I think of Dominique Mariso's pipeline. Her whole, I empathize with that of mothers, women of color, and I think about you and you said your sons, in the quest to just have their children survive. And you know what I mean, survive this systemic injustice because it's already planned that we would go from the cradle to prison. That's what's expected of us.

[6:46] Steve: So my grandmother, single woman, did everything she could so that I could be educated and survive. But then when you get educated, like you said, I went to white institutions primarily. So then there's this sense of Uncle Tom syndrome that I have been taught to please, to be safe, not be threatening. Oh, you know, and as long as I can please the overseer, I was rewarded. You know what I mean? And that's all I knew until I got to graduate school.

[7:15] Steve: Um, and then there's some sense of, oh, I can think on my own, I can have my own thoughts. I don't just have to regurgitate information back to you. I can critically think for myself. But I've always, you know, had on my own quest of writers of color, of scientists of color, of artists, or people. I was on my quest because I grew up around a Black environment. That's all I knew.

[7:38] Steve: And then I keep jumping because I look at you only because I'm also a professor at Penn State University. I was head of the MFA acting program, and he came through the program. And how then I go, how did I find myself as the educator, the Black male that was the head of something? You know what I mean? How did you?

[7:56] Tonya Pinkins: Listen, by the grace of, you know what I mean? You must have been tap dancing, young.

[8:03] Steve: I remember, I remember, no, literally, literally, I remember the day I discovered that and felt so shameful and bad. Because I said, Oh my God, I have been part of the Uncle Tom syndrome. And I was even to a point. Do y'all don't know if you remember this? I remember Cecil came to class and one of his other classes. I pulled him aside in my office. I was like, listen, and because the history of the school was Black men didn't survive there at our school. They will get you out and cut you out of the program.

[8:32] Steve: And I remember him and a friend, another Black male, bringing them in and going, y'all, listen, y'all got to stand and sit in the front row. Y'all got to be on time, be early. Pull out your notebook and pretend like you write notes. Even if you're not, look like you write notes. I did, that is what I did. Don't wear your hat to class. You have to look a certain way. And then I felt ashamed because I was training you to be in this oppressive environment. The very things I had been trained, and how I got to where I was. Isn't that messed up?

[9:01] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but it was how you had to survive though.

[9:03] Steve: But it's so important. I mean, it's like I had to tell my son we got to cut the locks now. They starting to see you in a certain way. We got to take your locks off. But it was so important, though. Like, because like I know I could only imagine that position, but like, you're the reason I went there. Like, if you were not in that position, I would not have gone there.

[9:22] Tonya Pinkins: So, like, you in there's Eric, then all bunch of dudes can like attest to that. So it's like, it's so important. Like, like, and you fought for that when we was in Toronto. Remember, you like, there's no Black teachers here. And they did they not understand, they couldn't even get it in their worldview. They're like, what? They were offended. They're like, Are you saying I can't teach students because I'm not Black? And you're like, bro, we just want to see ourselves.

[9:43] Tonya Pinkins: We want to see ourselves. And then this ideal of what the bar is, because I mean, you can't say that, but I'm about to say it. A lot of these higher education institutions. I mean, let's be clear, it's white schools of theater, white schools that teach Eurocentric value as the default. And if you don't fit into that, it's problematic.

[10:01] Steve: So I have a problem with that as an educator. You know what I mean? We need to diversify the faculty, who's administratives, who the deans are, who the principals are, so that the curriculum can diversify. But you want us to learn your centric.

[10:15] Tonya Pinkins: But you know, I got to say, as a teacher, I've been teaching at NYU Atlantic School, and I rarely have students of color, but if I have at least one student of color, it allows me to teach a little bit differently because they can let everybody know that how I'm being is okay.

[10:30] Tonya Pinkins: This last year I had no students of color, and I had my reviews were terrible. I really would be surprised if I even get invited back. They were like, I was the worst teacher they ever had. It was the, you know, the worst class in their history. And many of my complaints were that it was so punitive of me to have them read August Wilson monologues.

[10:55] Tonya Pinkins: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know if I just blew out that mic. But it's like I might not get, I might not get a job again because they get to write those things. And it, you know, I had them, and it was one day, one day, the final class, I had them read August Wilson monologues. That was punitive of me. Multiple, multiple people complained about that.

[11:16] Guest: Yeah, I find it amazing though, the perception is so the forefront of how we judge people and how we like what we take away from what somebody says. It's like there was this amazing voice teacher that I had when I was in grad school, and it was so interesting to hear how students that were not of color would talk about her, and it was like she's the bomb.

[11:42] Guest: Like she's telling you just as it is, she doesn't have sugar with what she's saying, she's just saying this is what it is.

[11:49] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

[11:50] Guest: Oh, she, she like I, oh, she's amazing. Uh-huh. Um Bennett, Fran Bennett, amazing woman. And but the way in which people talk about her that were not of color, it was like you don't understand. Like I want to say that this is mama, this is grandmama. Like, she just has a different way of talking to you that's not gonna coddle you and make you feel good because that's probably not how she grew up.

[12:12] Guest: That's not the struggle she went through in life, was being gentle to her. She had to have a tougher skin in order to communicate what she needed and communicate her needs, and so it wasn't gonna be, oh, let me take care of you, baby. She was not a mammy. She was the instructor of that class, and she was gonna tell you what you needed to know. If you didn't like how she said it, that's not on her. That's on you to understand your own insecurities and your ego and where you need to place that.

[12:37] Guest: But how people receive teachers of color is, I mean, from grade school. My first Black teacher was Miss McKibben. She taught me science in fifth grade, and she was a savior. Like she, it was amazing to see myself in science and to see and to be curious about that knowledge because I'd never seen, I didn't have a Black teacher ever again before. My mother was a teacher, but she wasn't my teacher.

[13:05] Guest: So I don't know, but I'm just thinking about perception and like how people perceive one another. And you don't know the traumas that people have gone through. You if you don't ask, you will never know, and it and you still may never understand it or empathize with it, but um empathize with it. Let me get that that, that fastest correctly.

[13:22] Guest: But everybody that is you, everybody that I know has grown up with some sort of trauma that has stunted them or propelled them in some way that when you're coming together in a group of people, it's difficult to say you don't always match because you're on different levels of understanding. Um and just to take the time to step back and look at what is being given to you versus how you initially feel about it, I think is more powerful and more you're gonna gain so much more from that.

[13:51] Guest: I mean, like punitive, please. Like August Wilson. I'll say on a more on a somewhat hopeful note. Um, you know, I'm an alumni of NYU's grad acting program, and recently I last spring I had the opportunity to go back as a, um they have a program called the diversity mentorship program where alums can come back and shadow one of the faculty members there and work with students for a semester and I worked with, um or the voice teacher Scott Miller with the first year class last year and they have started, at the request of the students what I will say is great you know, I drew with the point is they do listen they listen and they try to give the students what they ask for to the best of their ability and they started they brought in Michelle Shea to lead an August Wilson workshop with the entire first year class last week which I said Rashad came in and talked about get a whole school wide panel about August Wilson as like a class as classics yeah as classics the way the way that we were asked to study Arthur Miller and Clifford O.

[14:57] Steve: You know, like, why is not August Wilson considered amongst those? So the fact that, and it was such a success, and the entire class loved it so much, and I was able to sit in on a couple sessions, it was proven to them that now they see that there's value. We obviously always knew there was value, but to get a program like that to acknowledge the value, you know, it was refreshing. I'm like, okay, this is progress. So I'm hopeful that they will continue to move in that direction, but it is sometimes like pulling teeth to get these institutions to change, to get out of the crotchety old crap they've been using since 1945 and see the world. There are so many players, and I'm not even talking about, look, August Wilson's great, but August Wilson ain't the only black playwright that we need to, you know, like there's new stuff.

I mean, refreshing new writers out here. Like, let's do your homework. And I beg any teacher of actors at any institution, do your homework too. Like, go find the material. I actually had a teacher who asked me for a list of, she's like, could you give me a list of writers and plays that I could be looking at as I teach? And I appreciated the fact that she at least asked for help in getting those materials together.

[16:49] Tonya Pinkins: I think it's so lazy. She gets paid to do that. No, she gets paid to go on Google and take a villain. She needed to be able to pick up her phone book and go, oh, other playwrights, other teachers, please come on. Well, no, but she also, well, look, I love these things. She is one of the big reasons August Wilson's Michelle Shea was there and did it. But we'll say, okay, we'll give Lisa a little bit of props. But my thing is, it's like, whoa, these resources, these materials that these institutions seem somehow to not be aware of, it's like, well, let's get up to date. If I see one more damn egg scene from A Raisin in the Sun, it's like the only scene that they know. It's like every black man that comes through a great has had to, you know, it's like there are other scenes, you know, and every black man is not Walter Lee, you know, or doesn't need to not to say they can't play the role, but let's mix it up. Let's get some different material out here.

[17:54] Steve: And it makes me think of what you said about that freshman year class, how they thought of that class and how amazing it was to have that perspective that they all had to learn August Wilson as part of the classics. What we get as black actors from having to take in a world of theater that does not include us, we learn to exist outside of ourselves in new ways. We learn to embody other people. I mean, the first time I did this with a set of students that responded really well to it, what was exciting to me was they all came in and they were like, it's just so big. It's this is a lot of power, there's not the energy. I'm like, yeah, black people did Taxi Driver, The Shoeshake, they live in with that kind of power all the time.

It's an opportunity to embody a whole nother life that we have to do all the time. And it uses so little of us. And so it makes me go, if you're unwilling to embrace and even try to be exposed to things outside of your experience, then how are you going to learn to actually do the job that you're doing?

[19:02] Tonya Pinkins: But they don't have to, because the world was made for them to be comfortable. And so when you ask them to step into an August Wilson or a Katori Hall, it's not comfortable. And when the world was designed for your comfort, like I always say to my, I've dated a lot of white men, I'm uncomfortable all day long, every day. So I just made you uncomfortable. Join me. This is my life. We are used to just being uncomfortable all the time. And you ask them to be uncomfortable for an hour, it's a big ask. And you get blamed because if the world is designed for you to feel comfort and you make me feel uncomfortable, you're the problem. You're the problem. You're the problem. And you experience this. I know I've experienced this a lot, being in plays that are for black people and are written by black people, that white people who come and see the plays, often they can connect to many things about it. But if there's ever anything that makes them feel outside of the experience, they're like, something is wrong with the play.

[20:04] Steve: Well, I had that with Katori Hall's Hurt Village. They were like, this is just too much. Like, this was 90 minutes of some people's lives. They live in that 365, seven days a week. You couldn't do 90 minutes with these people. And the people in the audience who see themselves represented, the black folk who see themselves represented by that experience, they in those same moments that white people are blaming them, that's what's wrong with your play, are like, that is the thing that made that play liberating. That is the thing that liberated. That was my cathartic moment in that play. And so I would challenge these white students in these institutions that don't want to go outside of themselves, or these white audience members that are uncomfortable.

They don't have to go to the side. But I would encourage them, do it for their own benefit. For your audience, anybody urgent for your, I don't even care. Because if you're already comfortable and feeling good and you're living in a luxe apartment, why would you be able to do that? You got a TV series and you're getting Broadway shows. Why do I gotta learn August Wilson? Because it's 2020 and the world is gonna keep changing and you're gonna be left behind.

[21:06] Tonya Pinkins: Okay. It's gonna keep changing. This is my mother question. I love it. Because I worry about this as a mother. So I have a lot of black male friends who brag about, my mother knocked the shit out of me and my mother slapped me down. And I remember the time I did this and my mother blah blah blah blah blah. I got some hands going up, but we can't see hands. You got to say, yes, I'm like, y'all had those mothers. Yes. So I had a mother who was violently just brutally violent. And it is just something I could not do. I mean, I certainly tried to spank, and I just can't do it. I mean, I experienced such violence that I can't do it. And I worry about, I mean, and I've had to say to my children, sometimes to my sons, like, I maybe I have crippled you, but if you thought she was gonna get a mama who was gonna beat you and scream at you and all that, I'm not the one.

I'm not the one. If that's the only thing that's gonna motivate you, I'm not the one. I can't give it to you. And I worry about it, but then sometimes they go like, well, I'm so grateful that I can financially support my kids. But then I remember like nobody supported you, you was out there taking care of yourself. And you know, no, no, but it's like I can't, you know, put them out. I'm like, I can't put my kid out on the street when the world is like this and this and that, but I feel like a bad mother because I can't beat them, I can't scream at them, I can't put them out on the street, and I feel bad.

[22:29] Steve: I don't think you should feel bad. Because I've been all the above. Beat, all of it. And I remember growing up angry, and the only reason that it stopped when I got big enough and strong enough to fight back is when it stopped. And I always said if I had children, I would never, my little nephews, and when I see them, I will never whoop them. I would never. And I always wonder what the connection of that is toward slavery, yes, and whipping and that way of discipline. I really, but I feel like I'm as strong as I am because of what I went through. I mean, I feel like I went through such horrible shit that people today come to me and they offer me something like, what you got? You can't do nothing to me that I haven't done to me in my childhood. Bring it.

[23:12] Tonya Pinkins: True, true. But are there other ways? But then there's trauma that goes with it too. I mean, it can't be.

[23:17] Steve: Agreed, agreed. But it did make me who I am. And when I look at my children, I'm like, why am I having to take care of you? I was already doing this, that, and the other by the time I was your age. I feel like I watched Cops, and that was kind of enough for me. Like back in the 90s, Cops was nothing but black men getting taken to jail, put in the back of a car. You didn't want that. Then you had the beat down of LA, Rodney King. And that was another reason why I was like, nope, can't be bad.

[23:46] Tonya Pinkins: Television as a deterrent.

[23:52] Steve: No, no, no. I was gonna say, okay, can't be bad, but you also can't be good and be black. So it was kind of this like, well, I see this on television, it's represented to me this way. And I already grew up, I'm growing up in Texas. So I mean, I'm hypersensitive and hyper aware of always having to think about how other people are gonna perceive me. No matter what I'm doing, right or wrong, like I gotta be on guard. So I feel like I internalized it. And it has caused for a lot of anxiety and paranoia that I'm still working to unlearn and to deal with, which is very, I mean, that's my honest truth today, is that the anxiety has been high for a while. And like people were doing that 10-year reflection on what it's like been from 2010 to 2020.

And I remember everybody was leaving these positive things, and I just kept thinking, you know how many black people have died in the last 10 years? Do you know how we have survived and how we are still resilient as black people, still pressing forward to say we can do this, we can do better than we did last year? Like that to me is more powerful than like, well, I made this much money in 2006. Well, you know, 2016. But you know what I mean? Like, I feel like black people in the last 10 years have gone through so much and so much trauma of witnessing our people being shot and killed publicly, virally, and no one's doing anything about it. So I feel like the difference only is that we're seeing it. It was happening, it's still happening, it's always been happening.

[25:20] Tonya Pinkins: Right, it's just more visible. People get to suddenly pretend, oh my god, I didn't know that was happening, but that wasn't new. It was like when you know, Emmett Till was on the cover of a magazine. You know what I'm saying? That's when people like, oh no, we can't have this. You know, that magazine cover and that mother willing to share, show what had happened to her son, started an entire movement in the way I would say technology and social media and phone cameras on phones has ignited a new wave of action now.

[25:50] Steve: I don't know what to do. Maybe so, but because I think we're all kind of going in the other direction where we're starting to get numb. Like, oh, another shooting, somebody else got killed. Okay. You know, it's like I couldn't, I had to go to a point where I was like, I just can't watch any more videos. I just can't do it. I can't watch somebody else getting killed on my own health, and it's not that I don't care, I know that it's happening, but it's just, it's traumatizing. You know, it's traumatizing to watch these videos over and over and over again, and every time there's a new one. It's like I can't, I want to be part of the solution, but I can't be part of the solution at the expense of my own health.

[26:28] Tonya Pinkins: And you can't heal yourself fast enough. That's the trouble. You can't, like it happens so quickly and it happens so often. There is no time to heal. So you just kind of become this walking scar. And I guess again, I want to emphasize that we are still smiling, still finding ways to laugh, and still making beautiful work, just dazzling me on stage in the Hot Wing Kings. I will say with the mothering thing, I don't have no answers, but I will attempt to walk this line with y'all, like my experience with it. I was hit as a child. I don't know. I mean, I will say I learned a lot. I will, this is one thought that's pressing on my mind. A lot of times I can tell the difference between people who were whooped and who weren't. You know what I mean?

[27:12] Steve: How can you tell?

[27:13] Tonya Pinkins: For some reason, I can just, they act a certain way. Some people walk with like a certain level of impunity through the world as if nothing can happen to them. And that is one thing I do appreciate that my parents did instill up in me. And I was lucky, I'm a quick, I'm a very fast learner. So like it didn't take very long. Like a couple of them, one good. Like, I swear to God, I'm like two hands, I can count my whole life, maybe one. You know what I mean?

[27:35] Steve: Same lines, yeah.

[27:37] Tonya Pinkins: Some of them were extreme. I've seen some really messed up things happen to like friends and her stories, and I will say that's just crazy, but I do appreciate the fact that I understand that like it can end like that. For me, not like for me, you us. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it can end. Like, we can't just talk to anybody crazy. Like, we can't talk, and that's, I think I don't know, I don't have kids, so I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I do know they're not gonna talk to me crazy because I can't. That kind of privilege out the world. You brought them in, you'll take the half. You know what I mean? Because it's better me than a cop, better me. Right, right? That's then they're the teacher, but they're not gonna end up like Omari, they're not gonna end up like that. Our kids are more at risk. If I have anything to say that they will not end up like that.

[28:20] Steve: See, I let my kids say anything.

[28:22] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, wow, anything.

[28:24] Steve: Yeah, I do. I let them say anything.

[28:26] Tonya Pinkins: But don't do that. Do you feel that that has also shaped them to become more individualized than if you had tried to control them? Because I feel like there's the benefit to that of allowing them to say what they want to say. So that I hate to compare them because I don't know your children, but Jaden and Willow. Like, I know a lot of people had opinions of those two as children, but I found them to be very brilliant.

[28:50] Tonya Pinkins: And as Jada and Will allowed their children to become who they are today. Those two children are so smart and so opinionated, and they thought about what they have to say. So I feel like that's the benefit of allowing them to become themselves versus shifting them into this idea of who they're supposed to be in this world. Well, I'm gonna accept that. That I definitely tell you my children are all their own persons. I can't control nothing they say. I'm grateful that they speak to me and send their friends to me for advice. So I guess I did something right here. See, I'm yeah, yeah, I'm great. I think that it can be done both ways. I think that you can, there is a way to raise children who are aware and respectful without beating them.

But at the same time, I also feel like, you know, I was, you know, I could on one or two hands, like the number of beaten whoopings I got. But what I think is it's important. It's important. You was gay every week. That's what I'm gay in the Baptist church. I'm gonna give you a whooping before you re-impressed. It was too messy. But I think it's important to know that the whooping is coming from a place of love. And that is, and that is I think it has to, yeah, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. But I think that's because I, you know, there are a lot of people out here getting beat by family members that is not about them at all.

[30:21] Steve: Yeah, that was mine. I was getting beat by it, it wasn't about me. And you probably knew that it was not about you, and that's, and that's my only thing is like it's, if you, if I think you can sense when like you, you earn, you kind of earn that whooping and that it's coming from a place of like, you know, you didn't, um, and you know, and I'm gonna make sure that you not, that you're not gonna make this mistake again, as opposed to it coming from a parent or a relative or someone who is dealing something about who's working their own shit out on you. Literally, I just had this experience down in Peru where I, um, you know, I have sort of had a lifelong, uh, uh, low grade depression. Um, but the way I deal with my depression is to get very active, like the more depressed, the worse I feel, the more I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna accomplish a whole bunch of shit. And, um, I thought that that had moved. Like I had gone for about a year and a half and I hadn't experienced that feeling. And then I went down to Peru to do some medicine work, and it came up in this big way. And what that big way was was I just always had the feeling that I just didn't want to exist. You know, it didn't matter how successful I was or whatever, it just wasn't worth it. And, um, it came up huge when I was in Peru, and it was like, yeah, you could just check out now, your kids will get a lot of money, and just check out now. And it was like, it was overwhelming me, and I went to the facilitator and he was like, Well, when we do ceremony tonight, why don't you try to find the child, a little girl in yourself and try to figure out the origin of that.

[31:54] Tonya Pinkins: And so what happened for me in the ceremony that night was I first of all, there aren't even that many pictures of me. I tried to find a photograph of me as a little person, and you know, there's about five, and I found one and I tried to talk to that part of me. And what it was was I remembered being beaten when I, I couldn't have been more than two or three, and just being beaten so severely that I had to leave my body um because I felt that I was going to die. And um, and what came over me was that I was being beaten because I existed, because my existence had ruined my mother's life. My mother had me when she was 14, and so it was like, oh, oh, of course you don't want to exist. Like existence is a cause for you to be suffer very seriously, and you know, I don't know if that'll come up for me again, but it moved it for a time so that it's not, you know, what I'm dealing with at this moment, but that there was just that sort of low-grade thing.

I feel like this depression that I see in my students, my kids now is the depression of the overwhelm of all this traumatic, horrible information that shows you how powerless you are. Like powerlessness for me always made me just want to die because if I'm alive and I can't fix it, I don't want to be here. But it was always a single event. Now you like there's 10,000 events every day that you are just powerless over. Especially today. On this day.

[33:22] Steve: Right. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I think it's about, uh, you know, I'm as someone who's also, uh, you know, I've experienced a low point, a crossroads, I'll say, um, in terms of like what life is, why, why am I, why are you here, what is what is the goal, what is the purpose, what is your purpose, um, and how to stay inspired and motivated, uh, and attach yourself to something bigger than yourself, um, I think is always self-care is so crucial in terms of like knowing what is is wasted energy, what is sucking energy and joy from your life and shutting off all those doors. So I realized for me a part of it was like, uh, turn off the news. Like, you know, like what is what's wasted energy, the news is wasted energy.

You know, it's it's wasted, especially I've been talking, you know, this years ago, but it's like it the time that you can spend with negativity, like if you can shut that up. For some people, it's social media, like it's if it's nothing but negativity for you, if it's dragging you down, turn it off. Like turn it off and attach yourself to more things that bring you joy. If it's if it's creating art, create more art with with with telling stories that you are are, you know, proud of with people who who make you feel good. Like, like these are things you can aim for, these are attainable goals, these are attainable things that you can make a reality for yourself to keep yourself engaged in life, to engage in your your purpose and your your your reason for being here, because um we're here for a reason.

We're not accidents, we're not mistakes, we're here for a reason. And if we continue to attach ourselves to those things within us that bring us joy the reason and the purpose will, if it's not clear to you it will make itself clear, you know it will make itself clear, uh, you know over time I believe and that's it's it's just one day at a time every day, you know every day is a new opportunity to to um to find to try again to try again and and and if we reinvest in each day one day at a time we can we can we can you know it's a ladder we can we can build and not that you won't slip back down you know what I'm saying you will slip back a few rungs like it's not you know it it's a it's a it's you know it's a back and forth but if you if you if your trajectory remains in in the right direction you can at least avoid the slide being back down the mountain you know uh because you know we all climbing the mountain that's that's all we don't thank you for saying that I love you for being authentic and and and unapologetic about that I think one of the things that my experience especially with this show has been seeing people after the show come up and talk about what they've experienced watching it and that they've gone through I specifically remember a young woman named Gabrielle who came up afterwards and she talked about how she was from Memphis and how she had recently come out to her family and watching this show brought up so much for her um and she just started crying and I, I was kind of like uh speechless I didn't know what to say I didn't, I mean but I don't think looking back on it that wasn't for me to say anything.

[36:46] Steve: It was for me to remember like I'm here this is what this is what I'm giving. The power of theater on on this stage. And if I can find a way to be selfless in the giving and not necessarily be so concerned with what people are gonna say or think about it, then this is the gift that then comes back to me is somebody just saying thank you. And it's, it's but I'm also learning like it can't just be about somebody else saying thank you. It has to be me saying thank you to myself for at least getting out of my own way to be present to share this. Um because that feeling of not wanting to exist or just being so overwhelmed and and talked out, uh or um like there's so much white noise going on that you can't even hear your own voice.

That sometimes it's just taking that pause and and and moving forward with faith and going down that trajectory that then someone will cross your path and say thank you. Thank you for being you, thank you for being authentic, and thank you for being present. Um, because that I think is the hardest thing to do right now for for me is to just be present. Um, because there is so much going on.

[37:58] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, we're gonna take a right turn. Do any of you all watch naked combat?

[38:06] Steve: Negative combat combat, never heard of it.

[38:08] Guest: What's that?

[38:09] Tonya Pinkins: Sounds that it's just a fight naked.

[38:12] Steve: Oh my god.

[38:13] Tonya Pinkins: You guys don't know naked combat is this. This is all a network, what's it? This is gonna be uh a house moment. Are y'all really talking about I mean we were talking about you know sexuality, and I was like, we always gotta go out a little up, you know. We got so heavy and serious in there. That um naked combat is I find one of the most sexy things I've ever seen. And it's two men who wrestle to the fuck.

[38:40] Steve: Wrestle to the fuck to the fuck.

[38:46] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, oh wait. It's not a TV show.

[38:50] Guest: That's why I said what network is this on.

[38:51] Tonya Pinkins: This is on. It is a show.

[38:54] Guest: It's a show on this is the um porn hub or something.

[38:59] Steve: Oh yeah.

[39:01] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, so we're gonna watch this. And now we know what we're talking about. Y'all, nobody, I'm here. Honest to God, nobody's ever heard of Naked Combat. So look, look, there we're all looking at a video of um can someone make it come up? There it is. We're watching what I wanted to say about naked combat is. That um, well, a guy friend of mine told me that what I loved about it is some of my gay friends. You gotta hit the card. Can you gonna put it up? No, I don't know how to do that. Hold up. You can airplay it. Air player, airplane. How do I airplay it? Who knows how to airplay? I don't have airplane. Team Android over here. Naked.

[39:46] Steve: So what was interesting to me about it is that like I had a this was a right turn. This is a right turn. Good. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. Now we're gonna go. No, no, no, because I had this friend, he's not with us anymore, and um, he had been married to a woman for a very, very long time, and and then they divorced, and he then thereafter had relationships with men. And one of the things he said about it was that when he surrendered in sex with a man, he felt like this man knew what the cost of the surrender was. Like the sex with the man was so full on that that that was um, you know, that he loved it. And so um I Naked Combat was the um, this just went up on the air. Here, let me try my right video.

I wasn't that TV was blank before, and then all of a sudden there were. But where's the show though? It's on airplay. So I what what had me thinking about it was this idea that when you when you see naked combat, it's two men. So it's there it is, and it's trying to play. Two men, and the intensity of their energy is so like if it was a man and a woman, a man couldn't match this energy with a woman. It would feel violent. It would feel dangerous. But when you see these two men coming at each other with this kind of energy, the virility is exciting and hot, and uh I find it incredible. It wouldn't be good with two women, but with two men, it's I find it very uh hot as we're watching porn videos here together. I just want to put that out there. Wow. What do you think?

[41:42] Guest: Um but they're not really fighting.

[41:44] Steve: I see that.

[41:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but they're not really wrestling.

[41:53] Guest: Aren't you a wrestler?

[41:53] Steve: Aren't you a wrestler? Did I embarrass you guys? I didn't know.

[41:56] Tonya Pinkins: What do you mean it's not real?

[42:00] Guest: No, I mean they're not really like trying to pin him down for a point of wrestling.

[42:05] Tonya Pinkins: No, they're trying to pin him down for the point of sex.

[42:07] Steve: Yes.

[42:09] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, we're gonna let that go. We're gonna finish it up here. We're gonna wrap it up because someone's coming in the door. Let's have my phone back, please. Oh, oh, gentlemen. It was so wonderful.

[42:28] Tonya Pinkins: Right. Oh my god. Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, The Show Where You Can. I'm Tonya Pinkins. This is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales. Edited by Derek Gunther, music by Anthony Norman. Available wherever you get your podcast. And visit me on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And let me know what you'd like to hear me talk about. For more information, visit bpn.fm forward slash YCST.