This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hey, this is Tonya Pinkins, and it is after the Super Bowl.

[0:04] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know when you'll be listening to this, but I'm just letting you know it's after the Super Bowl.

[0:07] Tonya Pinkins: You're listening to my podcast, You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:15] Tonya Pinkins: My guest today is Kelley Girod.

[0:18] Tonya Pinkins: And what did your mother say about the halftime show at the—uh, my mother said J Lo looked good?

[0:25] Tonya Pinkins: It's about time that men realize the poll is not about their dick.

[0:29] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[0:30] Tonya Pinkins: Hey, that was the words of Martha Girod, the woman who raised me and nine other children.

[0:36] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[0:38] Tonya Pinkins: And what an introduction there from Kelley Girod, who now you were giving us a—uh, background about the name, because I was like, is it Girod?

[0:45] Tonya Pinkins: Is it Girod?

[0:46] Tonya Pinkins: And you were talking about the origins of the name and what happened with it.

[0:49] Tonya Pinkins: Tell us.

[0:49] Kelley Girod: Yeah, well, you know, I don't know what happened with it.

[0:52] Kelley Girod: Because, well, between my dad's generation and my dad—excuse me, my grandpa's generation and my dad's generation, someone shortened it and anglicized it because it used to be G-I-R-O-U-A-R-D, which is the Creole, the Cajun.

[1:06] Kelley Girod: Which is pronounced for us.

[1:10] Kelley Girod: Girod.

[1:11] Kelley Girod: And um, and for whatever reason, someone shortened it to G-I-R-O-D and then anglicized it, which just made it so much more difficult.

[1:18] Kelley Girod: Now, like I feel like you could get away with that if you were up north, but in Louisiana, everyone's last name is French.

[1:25] Kelley Girod: Everyone.

[1:25] Kelley Girod: And we are undeniably of French heritage on both sides.

[1:28] Kelley Girod: Like both my parents speak French.

[1:30] Kelley Girod: So I'm just like, I haven't gotten around yet to asking who or why they did that, because it just made it so much more difficult for us in school.

[1:38] Kelley Girod: Oh Garde, Garot.

[1:40] Kelley Girod: It's like not.

[1:41] Kelley Girod: Girod.

[1:42] Tonya Pinkins: Girod.

[1:42] Tonya Pinkins: And you are Creole, like Jelly Girod Morton.

[1:45] Kelley Girod: I am.

[1:46] Tonya Pinkins: So you said both your parents speak French.

[1:48] Tonya Pinkins: I gotta get into that.

[1:49] Tonya Pinkins: Tell me, tell me, tell me.

[1:50] Tonya Pinkins: So were they Jean de Color, uh, Quadrune, whatever?

[1:54] Tonya Pinkins: Come on, tell me.

[1:54] Tonya Pinkins: What's the story?

[1:55] Kelley Girod: It's the—oh my god, it's so confusing.

[1:58] Kelley Girod: Um, so on my father's side, we're of Cajun French descent.

[2:02] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[2:02] Kelley Girod: Now the Cajuns are uh descended from Nova Scotia.

[2:06] Kelley Girod: They were kicked out of Nova Scotia during the Grand Derangement.

[2:09] Kelley Girod: Um, some of them were—uh, went to Haiti and stayed there.

[2:13] Kelley Girod: Some of them continued on their way to Louisiana and founded um the Cajun or Acadian uh settlements there.

[2:19] Kelley Girod: So if you're in Louisiana and you go start—you're going out towards Lafayette, like let's say you're going towards Texas, uh Lafayette, Arnaville, all those areas there are very um Cajun population.

[2:31] Kelley Girod: Um, so those people were—were white.

[2:35] Kelley Girod: They came from France, went to uh Nova Scotia, then uh landed in Louisiana.

[2:41] Kelley Girod: My ancestors were the first uh settlers um to create the settlement in St.

[2:47] Kelley Girod: Martinville, Louisiana.

[2:48] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[2:48] Kelley Girod: And if you go back to St.

[2:49] Kelley Girod: Martinville, all of the signs are still written in English and French.

[2:52] Tonya Pinkins: Oh wow.

[2:53] Kelley Girod: Um, so on my father's side, my lineage is pretty much white until a certain point, and then someone—I mean I have my whole history, but just to like shorten this, like someone married a uh a Native American woman who was also of color.

[3:08] Kelley Girod: We even have—I think I've got an ancestor who was one of the um soldiers of color who fought on the side of the Confederacy.

[3:15] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, but they were free people of colors, and I think that they did own some slaves.

[3:21] Kelley Girod: They didn't own huge plantations.

[3:23] Kelley Girod: So yeah, when I learned that it was a lot to deal with.

[3:25] Tonya Pinkins: Now my mother's side, totally different.

[3:27] Kelley Girod: They're of Creole French descent.

[3:29] Kelley Girod: And the Creoles for the most part, are—it—the definition changes depending on what time period you're in, what part of the city you're in.

[3:38] Kelley Girod: It's crazy, but for the purposes of this, Creole really just means uh French speaking uh black people, people of mixed descent, black people of mixed descent.

[3:47] Kelley Girod: It means that in New Orleans, because New Orleans used to have some real defined, like every drop, you know, you was a quadrune, you was an occaroon.

[3:54] Kelley Girod: I mean like yes, and it could have depended on where you um where you lived.

[3:58] Kelley Girod: So if you lived in a certain section of New Orleans, you could have been Creole and it had nothing to do with your race.

[4:03] Kelley Girod: There were also white Creoles, and then there were people who were freed black people before this emancipation who did not want to uh be cons—didn't want to have—they didn't want to be aligned with people who were former slaves.

[4:18] Kelley Girod: So they called themselves Creoles, even though they may not have spoken French, didn't have a—but they called themselves Creoles because it was like a racial hierarchy, right?

[4:26] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, so that's why you have so much um tension when it comes to people saying that they're Creole.

[4:33] Kelley Girod: I feel like so a large part of my life was you say you're Creole when people automatically think that you're negating your blackness.

[4:41] Kelley Girod: But you know, that's how we learn to divide ourselves amongst each other, you know.

[4:46] Kelley Girod: And it's like, and it never doesn't mean that for me, you know.

[4:50] Kelley Girod: I was raised in a very specific culture and uh love my Cajun Creole heritage, but undeniably black and have always been black.

[4:58] Tonya Pinkins: Now let's talk about how you are black and always been black, but you got a whole white half.

[5:02] Kelley Girod: Yeah.

[5:04] Tonya Pinkins: So let's—I uh, that interests me.

[5:06] Tonya Pinkins: You know, yesterday I had a guy I was talking to, and he, you know, looks like a white waspate, you know, patrician, but he's Jewish.

[5:14] Tonya Pinkins: And he talked about, you know, what it's like to, you know, people be treating you like you're one of them, and then you mention you're Jewish, and then like you are just gone.

[5:23] Tonya Pinkins: You're just gone.

[5:24] Tonya Pinkins: So for you, um, is there a way that you walk in the world where suddenly you're accepted and suddenly you're not?

[5:32] Kelley Girod: You know, I feel like it used to be that way.

[5:35] Kelley Girod: Um, I think uh, the more that I learned to—because look, when you grow up in a space that confusing, and race is confusing because it's—because there is no uh scientific basis to it, it's anthropological.

[5:53] Kelley Girod: We've been taught that uh there's this mongoloid, negroid, caucasoid bullshit.

[5:59] Kelley Girod: It's not true.

[6:01] Kelley Girod: Right.

[6:01] Kelley Girod: Uh, humans are—uh, I think somebody said something like humans are more closely related than penguins, like there's more species of penguins than there are something I'm probably saying.

[6:10] Kelley Girod: And the greatest genetic diversity between two humans exists on the continent of Africa between two Nigerians.

[6:16] Kelley Girod: In fact, as you move off the continent of Africa, you become more genetically similar.

[6:20] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[6:21] Kelley Girod: You know, uh, but I, you know, um, there's this great podcast I listened to last year called Seeing Whiteness, and it's really about uh how learning about our origins, especially in this country, about the different uh race classifications that race wasn't invented with the founding of our country with Thomas Jefferson.

[6:43] Kelley Girod: We needed—oh, not there—there needed to be a slave class.

[6:46] Kelley Girod: Well, there needed to be a justification for the existence of slavery in the land of the free and the home, you know, of the brave, whatever they needed a justification, so they went to scientists and they asked them to come up with something.

[6:57] Kelley Girod: Yeah, and Hitler actually learned that from us.

[7:00] Kelley Girod: Eugenics was invented on our soil.

[7:03] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[7:03] Kelley Girod: And then Hitler imported it.

[7:05] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[7:06] Kelley Girod: They just did it.

[7:07] Kelley Girod: They just, you know, took it, they just took it all the way.

[7:09] Kelley Girod: Took it to the nth level, and you know, we might be on the way there too.

[7:13] Tonya Pinkins: Yep.

[7:14] Tonya Pinkins: Well, here we are.

[7:16] Tonya Pinkins: And you could say that.

[7:17] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, uh, it's um, yeah, I—and I'm sure, you know, I know that we're gonna get into the thing at the Atlantic Theater, but uh, because so much of what the um invention of race reminds me of is that like, you know, you can be having a very real human interaction with someone, and then this thing that you have that you were taught sudden something turns on in your brain, and you're like, oh, wait a second, but that person is different from me.

[7:47] Kelley Girod: You know, it's like you saw that in Ebony's play, how like, you know, we're taking up Paris, which is at Atlantic's second stage by now, right now, by Ebony Booth.

[7:55] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[7:55] Kelley Girod: And Tonya and I did the talk back uh a couple weekends ago.

[8:00] Kelley Girod: Um, but that, you know, there's these spaces where you relate to each other and you're able to comfort each other and relate to each other on a human level, and then that thing that you're—that just because uh you're born here, and it's so difficult to overcome uh the things that you're taught um and in terms of you know what's your—what your value is because of the race that you are, now you know?

[8:31] Tonya Pinkins: No, you guys can't see Kelley, but she's this really beautiful woman.

[8:34] Tonya Pinkins: I can only see her eyes.

[8:35] Tonya Pinkins: She's got these big, big Egyptian almond eyes, and she's got an oval face and she's got wavy curly hair, and you know, she's fair, fair, fair skinned, and like she keeps coming to mind for me is the um the book The Wind Done Gone.

[8:52] Kelley Girod: Do you know The Wind Done Gone?

[8:54] Tonya Pinkins: No, The Wind Done Gone.

[8:55] Tonya Pinkins: I'm not gonna get her last name.

[8:57] Tonya Pinkins: Maybe Beatrice will tell me what the author's last name is.

[8:59] Tonya Pinkins: But it is the story of Gone with the Wind from the point of view of the blacks.

[9:03] Kelley Girod: Oh, right.

[9:04] Kelley Girod: Yes.

[9:04] Tonya Pinkins: I knew I had heard of this, and I was like, I knew it was a Gone with the Wind.

[9:07] Kelley Girod: Yes, and it is a series of letters by the sister of what—what's Alice Randolph?

[9:12] Kelley Girod: Alice Randolph wrote it, and the sister of the woman, who's the lead woman who—who run—who let Tara.

[9:17] Tonya Pinkins: What's that character?

[9:18] Kelley Girod: Scarlett.

[9:18] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, she's Scarlett's sister.

[9:21] Kelley Girod: But she is a little more—uh, has a little more melanin, you know, and a little more curl in her hair and a little more curved to her body.

[9:30] Kelley Girod: But other than that, the two of them look identical.

[9:35] Kelley Girod: And the man who marries Scarlett is actually in love with her sister, and there's this affair and competition between the two of them.

[9:43] Tonya Pinkins: And as I was looking at you, I was thinking, I could imagine the completely lacking of melanin version of you, you know, standing beside you and this man sort of getting his choice between these two women.

[9:56] Tonya Pinkins: I don't mean to offend or anything, but I was just thinking like, here's this really beautiful fair woman, but the curl in your hair would say, mm-mm, you know, we can't marry her.

[10:06] Kelley Girod: Oh yeah, no, no, no, no, no, for sure.

[10:09] Kelley Girod: In fact, like, it's, you know, I mean, it's not funny, except that like, you know, you develop a sense of humor about these things growing up in the South.

[10:15] Kelley Girod: Uh, a la Martha Girod, my mom who I quoted, like she is just effing hysterical.

[10:20] Kelley Girod: I mean, you want to hear her take on everything.

[10:22] Kelley Girod: Um, in fact, I keep telling her she should like do her own shit.

[10:25] Kelley Girod: Um, but uh, you know, I have siblings, I mean, I've got nine siblings, and we all have different features.

[10:33] Kelley Girod: I've got siblings with blonde hair, green eyes.

[10:36] Kelley Girod: I've got siblings who are olive toned with auburn hair.

[10:40] Kelley Girod: I've got, you know, siblings who are, you know, brown skin, bro—like we are everything.

[10:47] Kelley Girod: And I had like—I actually I wrote this poem because I would, I don't know, I was like, I feel like I was like trolling my brother.

[10:53] Kelley Girod: But because he's—he's blonde, and like there's no way you would be able to tell he's black, except that I'd say, uh, I was like, you know, David, I said one day you're gonna get pulled over and the cop's gonna be real nice to you, then he's gonna see your roots and you're gonna get thrown on the hood.

[11:11] Kelley Girod: Because you know, it's like people always checking for that, right?

[11:18] Tonya Pinkins: Wow, that's cool.

[11:19] Tonya Pinkins: I mean, I mean, I'm gonna have to see a picture when I'm done to see this whole family because if you all walking down the street, it had to just be incredible.

[11:29] Kelley Girod: Yeah, no, and my—and my parents made us always sit in the front pew of our all-white church every Sunday, impeccably dressed.

[11:36] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[11:37] Kelley Girod: You know, uh, and actually, like some of that comes out in my play, The Faith Healer, you know, because we always have to be on our best behavior.

[11:37] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[11:37] Kelley Girod: We always have to be perfect, to represent the race, you know.

[11:48] Tonya Pinkins: So yeah, and now I can't even remember what I'm like, I feel like there was a point to this at some point.

[11:54] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, it was me looking at you.

[11:55] Tonya Pinkins: It was me sitting here looking at your beautiful face, and that's where that went to.

[11:59] Kelley Girod: So you are the founder of a theater festival that happens every year.

[12:04] Kelley Girod: This is in its 10th year.

[12:05] Tonya Pinkins: 11th.

[12:06] Kelley Girod: It's in its 11th year, and it's called The Fire This Time.

[12:10] Kelley Girod: And why don't you explain the origin of that quote?

[12:12] Kelley Girod: I mean, it has many origins.

[12:14] Kelley Girod: I think it's both from a sp—spiritual.

[12:18] Kelley Girod: It's also from Baldwin.

[12:19] Kelley Girod: So why don't you explain why you created this festival, The Fire This Time?

[12:22] Kelley Girod: Sure.

[12:23] Kelley Girod: I mean, it's a very s—very simple thing.

[12:26] Kelley Girod: I created this festival because I came out of grad school at Columbia.

[12:29] Kelley Girod: I did my master's in playwriting at Columbia and did not have a community.

[12:35] Kelley Girod: I came out and I felt like I was healing hearing about people like Marcus Gardley and Katori Hall and Pia Wilson and Rada Blank and all these people like 10 years ago that like, you know, I was hearing about all these people and I'm like, but where are—how do I have access to them?

[12:47] Kelley Girod: How can I—how do I get this community?

[12:49] Kelley Girod: And then also I'd had an experience where I feel like if you're a black artist or particularly a black writer, you—you are going to write that play that you think is the black with a capital B.

[13:00] Kelley Girod: So I had written that play, which was about, you know, um, uh the—the trash gangs and American slavery, you know, the groups of women and how they socialized each other and stuff like that.

[13:11] Kelley Girod: And uh, so I had written that play, but then—but that was prior to me going to um Columbia.

[13:18] Kelley Girod: And then while I was at Columbia, I was like, I really wanted to explore my voice, you know, go figure.

[13:22] Kelley Girod: That's what you're supposed to do in grad school, right?

[13:24] Kelley Girod: So I had an agent at William Morris, who was a—she was one of the biggest agents at the time.

[13:29] Kelley Girod: And she read my my play Lessons of the Trash Gang, and then she asked to see the rest of my work.

[13:34] Kelley Girod: So I sent her my work, which I thought was so much stronger than that play, because that was pre-grad school.

[13:41] Kelley Girod: And she—and then she wrote back and said, Oh, you know, we're not gonna be able to represent you at this time.

[13:46] Kelley Girod: And I knew, Tonya, I knew in my head that she could not wrap her mind around the fact that there was this ver—there was this play that lived very specifically in the—in a—in the world of slavery and our trauma with that.

[13:59] Kelley Girod: And then there was a play that dealt with a brother and a sister, and didn't really have like wasn't, you know, specifically connected to that. But, but you know, as with all things, if you come from a certain culture or certain experience, that's gonna find its way in it. But it was more nuanced. And it's it was more in the way that these this brother and sister really had a codependency on each other. And um, but I but I knew I was gonna have problems with that. And I because my entire life it was like, what are you? What are you? It was constantly putting in a box. And I was like, you know what? Fuck this. I was just like, because I I was just like, I'm gonna just do it on my own. So do you think that William Morris was looking for you to write more in the trash game voice?

That was the voice they were looking for. Yeah, yeah. And and I to this day, my thesis play, I mean, I the word the writing I'm doing now is much stronger than my thesis play, but my thesis play to me was much stronger and more interesting and closer to my authentic voice than that other play. Um, so I just said, you know what? I was like, this is gonna be something that we're gonna have to deal with. I gotta create a space for my own work. And I said, and I bet you anything that there's other people who need that too. So I was interning at Horse Trade Theater at the time, and uh, and uh, which is on East Fourth Street, and Erez Ziv is a prince of a human being, and thank God this industry has him.

Because I said, Hey, Erz, I have an idea for a festival. I said, I want to get a bunch of black playwrights together, and I want there to be no theme. I want the black playwrights to be able to write whatever the hell they want. So our motto 10 years ago was uh any play written by a black playwright is a black expression, even if it's about two white people in love.

[15:36] Tonya Pinkins: And who were your first group of playwrights?

[15:38] Kelley Girod: Rada Blank, Pia Wilson, Katori Hall, Derek McFadder, Germano Toussaint, Deborah Assimway, and me. Quite a group. Uh, Katori Hall and I represented on Broadway bit with Tina in a TV series, P Valley, and Rada Blank, the second woman ever to win the directing award at Sundance this year, which Sundance had three women winning directing awards this year. Yeah. 2020 for 2019. Yeah. And Rada's playwriting is absolutely amazing. Yes, I've read a couple of her plays. Um so yeah, so so literally, you know, a bunch of us got into a room. Eras was like, you guys can have the weekend, do whatever you want. And a bunch of us, I think that first meeting was, yeah, it was it was actually it was me, Marcus Gardley, Rada Blank, Germano, Derek, and we were all just we had a safe space to just go off.

And we were just like, you know what? Like, we're so tired of being seen through the lens of August Wilson or Amira Baraka or Lorraine Hansbury. Not that those like, you know, we we love and respect them and we need them, but we also need the other stories. We need the sci-fi plays, we need the hipster plays, we need the punks, we need the, you know, now we have um uh so many plays now that this was our first year that we had um a couple of cast members who were transgendered, and two plays about transgender experience, and um, so it's just like it's the the it's like what I said, like our our imagination is so vast, as with anybody else, and um, and we needed a space to exercise that, you know, and uh, and so silly me, I thought, oh, it's I'm gonna do this for one year, and then you know I'm gonna be hit it big on Broadway 11 years later.

[17:30] Kelley Girod: Well, thank you that it's still going on 11 years later.

[17:32] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, no, I mean, thank you all for the support. Like it's funny because I feel like I've I've seen you in the audience, I've seen you've done re uh readings. I direct you, you. You know, you directed, yeah. I mean, it's just like, well, and you know, we gotta get your your writing now to bring it full circle. Um, but it's one of those great things too, where there's just a space to to um to be flexible. Like, you know, you uh, you know, some of our producers want to try their hand at playwriting. We say, okay, submit. Some of our dramaturgs, our actors, like everyone, it's it's so fluid. And I, you know, uh this we had it was closing weekend, and we were kind of, you know, we were talking about what had happened at Atlantic at the talk.

Well, we need to, we can't, we can't do that. We have to, we have to go back now. So uh this past, I don't know what date it is anymore, dates, who cares? But um, Paris is at the Atlantic stage two, and hopefully this podcast will air before it closes, and you can see it. When does it close?

[18:25] Kelley Girod: Paris.

[18:26] Tonya Pinkins: Oh my god. Do you work at the Atlantic?

[18:28] Kelley Girod: I don't.

[18:28] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, I thought I looked online and I read that you were in charge of something at the Atlantic Theater.

[18:33] Kelley Girod: Oh, the talkback, but I just the talk back.

[18:36] Tonya Pinkins: So you don't have an ongoing position there.

[18:38] Kelley Girod: No, I just I've started doing a lot more stuff with them over the years. Like I've got it.

[18:41] Tonya Pinkins: I thought I was thinking that you were responsible for bringing that play into the world as a channel.

[18:45] Kelley Girod: Oh, because I was like, hold on, I'm missing a check in that case. Oh, okay. Well, we saw Paris, and for me, what was interesting about Paris, um, as brought up by the audience is that the lead black woman was a passive character. She worked in a white space, which was like a warehouse of what could be an Amazon or a Walmart. And because she was in this white space, she was passive. And that excited me because I am personally in resistance against Aristotle and story structure. I think it is um it is one of the drugs of the patriarchy, of the hierarchical systems that we send people out to go on the hero's journey, and they get this pumped up feeling, and then they have to go back and live their lives because most of us are not the heroes of our own lives.

And I was excited to see a story that was more about everyone rather than having to have someone be the initiator of everything that happened in their life. Because most of us we're not, we're just responding and doing a great job because if we stay on the planet in responding to the hardships that come our way, that in itself is heroic and victorious.

[19:49] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[19:50] Kelley Girod: Yeah, so we were um so um so after that after the play, I was moderating the talk back. And sorry, Tanya, do you want me to go into the story now? Because um, we could, I mean, like someone from the audience mentioned this moment where the black character um said something about college and a white actor was like, you went to college, yeah, and the black woman had to diminish, it's like, oh, just for a year, just for a year, just for a year. And this issue of someone said about why we as black women always have to diminish our accomplishments. And I spoke from my experience and said, well, that my experience has been that most white women of privilege have been raised that they are the prize.

And and and and and as the prize, there's nothing higher than them. And so when they come face to face with a person of color who is articulate, who is successful, who is uh capable, who is attractive, it is an affront to their identity. And actually, Frederick Douglass said it better than I do. And before we end, I'm gonna read Frederick Douglass's quote. But it is like an affront to their existence, their identity. It does not compute, they have to make that go away because that just like uh my identity. And then someone from the audience, uh a white woman said, Um, uh please could you repeat that? I didn’t hear it. And I did repeat it because I thought she genuinely didn't hear it. Whereupon she and her friend got up.

Now they were sitting there at the exit, so they could have gotten up and left, but they chose to walk all the way across to the other side of the theater, down and and walk in front of the entire audience to come in front of me and say into my face, I am not going to sit here and listen to talk like that. Whereupon the people in the audience who could hear that went, therefore proving the point that was just made.

[21:42] Tonya Pinkins: Right, right, right, yeah.

[21:45] Kelley Girod: And I mean, I was like, I was very rattled after that, you know. Uh, but I don't think that I realized how long of a lasting effect that had on me because even last weekend, this past weekend we were closing the festival, you know, my my producers and I were sitting in the office as you know the the shows were finishing, and we were just kind of like, you know, talking about the season and talking about like, you know, why we love this space so much. And so we said, so then we spoke about that experience, you know, the experience at the Atlantic. And I was like, guys, I was like, you know what? I said, you know, we may be a small theater, and it may be like our theater may not be as fancy as other people's theater, I say it, but every year for two weeks in January, this is our shit.

I don't have to ask anybody's permission or money or anything to do it. This is ours. Like, if you have ever been in a fire this time audience, it is black as hell. We sing between shows. If anybody wants to get up and sing, people bring their children. Somebody had their dog there the other night. I mean, it is, it is ours. And it's it's never been about the plays being perfect, it's always been about all uh the the array of our and diversity of our imagination and just having a damn place to relax. Like I know nobody's getting up in my face at the fire this time. I know that's not gonna happen. I mean, that did happen one year, but it happened out on the sidewalk, and I was seven months pregnant, so I was ready to go.

[23:22] Tonya Pinkins: What happened?

[23:23] Kelley Girod: Someone was pissed off because um Aziza Barnes, who was also gone to stardom, her play um was addressing the the Bill Cosby allegate, you know, and um and not in a not in a nice way. I mean, as it shouldn't have been, I mean, it's like he's a predator. And someone took offense to that and asked me after the plays, um, why did you allow something like that to be on the stage? I said, did you read what the what the what the theme of the show is before you came? I say is we don't put restrictions on our playwrights. And he said, and he proceeded to call me the N-word. Now this was this was another black person, not that that makes a difference. Um, but he went on, and I and my friends had to pull me back because again, I was seven months pregnant, I was all up in my hormones, I wouldn't normally do that, you know.

I would deflect. But um, but that's really been the only time that we've ever had an issue because you know, I'm not depending on the New York Times reviews, I'm not depending on board members' money. I don't it's it's it's about us. It's a freedom. You know?

[24:30] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. So that is an amazing thing. So how do you keep it going?

[24:34] Kelley Girod: You know, uh you've we've become such a well-oiled machine at this point. Um, that uh it it kind of produces itself in a lot of ways. But I have a fantastic team. Caesar Williams, AJ Mohammed, Julian Hairston. Again, Erez Ziv is a prince of a human being. I don't know why the the New York theater industry has not given this man a lifetime achievement award. I nearly everyone I know has gone through the Crane Theater at some point in their career, and Ereziv asks nothing in return. He is just an amazing human being. I mean, I it if if you are an artist and you want to try something out, go to Erez Ziv, ask him if you can have a weekend of the theater, he will likely give it to you.

[25:18] Tonya Pinkins: Wow.

[25:19] Kelley Girod: You know? I the the the power of someone saying yes to you, particularly when you're doing it, like me coming out of grad school and someone saying, sure, have the theater for a weekend, and look what it did. And and you know, it's like it's not difficult to sustain itself because every year we get more submissions. I can only choose maximum eight playwrights a year. We went through 70 submissions this year. 70. Now, did the wait I thought that the first year it started where the first playwrights had to pick the next playwright.

[25:48] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[25:49] Kelley Girod: And that was wonderful. So our so uh so the structure used to be that the playwrights in the prior season chose chose a playwright, and that playwright would would automatically be in. And um, I think it was around maybe year five, six that we stopped doing that because we wanted to be able to open it up wider. Um, and uh, and it was a it was a great thing. I mean, because I can tell you every year on that stage, there are playwrights whose work I have never seen, that I've never heard. The submissions that come through are playwrights I've never seen. And I'm I'm looking at this stuff, Tanya, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, I've got enough plays and playwrights in this season alone to program an entire season, no, two seasons of a of a of a theater, you know.

But then that gets us to this conversation of what gets programmed in mainstream theater. And my experience, and I am certainly the beneficiary of this, is that the shows that get done have to do with black people that they're comfortable having in the room.

[26:57] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[26:58] Kelley Girod: And you know, I can often look at a group of people, and I just because I've I've had the benefit of having that privilege bestowed upon me, I can go, oh, that person there'll be comfortable with they won't be comfortable with you, so you're not getting in the room, and you're not getting in the room. With actors, playwrights, I directors. I just can tell. Like they're comfortable to bring you to their house to have cocktails, and so you're gonna get an opportunity, you know. And it's that thing, I don't know where I was talking about this, but that's what privilege is that you can arrange your world around being comfortable, whereas people with less privilege are uncomfortable all the time about something, and that is our launch pad for our brilliance, is that we're uncomfortable and that doesn't stop us.

[27:39] Tonya Pinkins: This is Tonya Pinkins, and you've been listening to part one of my conversation with founder of the Fire This Time Festival, Kelley Girod. Come back for part two. Oh, you can't say that on the Broadway podcast member.