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Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, Fond of Greater Cleveland, Inc. hello, Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Thursday, October 10th.

I'm Dr. Rachel Carnell, Dean and Mandel chair in the Humanities at the Jack Joseph and Morton Mandel Honors College at Cleveland State University.

And I am thrilled to introduce today's forum.

Ten years ago, the Mandel Foundation endowed the Honors College at Cleveland State with a mission to develop future leaders with the values, ability and passion to change the world and a belief that the humanities are key to that mission.

Human stories are the smallest building block of the humanities, the seed of a novel, a play or a film.

Whereas stories circulating on the Internet are often designed to generate clicks, Stories turned into a humanistic work of literature, or what caused us to slow down and reflect, to find empathy with the experience of others.

Effective leaders also deploy stories to transform cultures, organizations, and even entire nations.

To mark the Mandel Honors College's 10th anniversary, we have invited local leaders from three core humanities sectors film, theater and literature.

We're delighted to welcome to the City Club Hermione Malone, executive director of the Cleveland International Film Festival.

Michael Obertacz executive director of Near West Theater.

And Matt Weinkam Executive director of literary Cleveland.

So how can we harness the power of stories to transform the world?

If you have a question for our speakers, you can text at 23305415794.

That's 33054195794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the second half of the program.

Members and Friends of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming Hermione, Michael and Matt.

Hey, guys.

How are you?

Good.

I'm Dan Moulthrop and the chief executive here at the City Club.

It's so great to have all of you here.

As my colleague Jerome said, you are a great looking audience, and you smell good as well.

And I want to anchor us in in this notion of the humanities.

And I say notion because if we surveyed the 200 people here and ask them a simple question, what are the humanities?

We'd probably get at least 199 different answers.

So, Hermione, when you say humanities, what do you mean?

Really simply, I think of the humanities as the exploration and study of the things that connects us as humans our language, our culture, our traditions, our stories.

the history of the human experience, the journeys that we are on and what we're learning from the past and who we are today and how we can keep moving forward.

Mm hmm.

Can I add to that jump in that you mentioned?

If you surveyed everybody in this room, we'd have a different answer for what the humanities are.

That's what I love about the humanities.

If you're in math, if you're in science, there are right answers in there, wrong answers.

And the humanities, there's arguments.

We can have debates about who's right and wrong.

And those questions lasts so much longer than a math problem that you can solve.

And when you solve it, it's over.

We're never going to solve these problems.

We're going to keep debating it.

I think that's what makes the humanities special.

I'm pretty sure there are mathematicians that would argue with about the durability of mathematics here.

That being said, though, I mean, this being a humanities conversation, I just felt compelled to argue with you about that.

That's a pretty good point.

To prove your point, Matt, what make the case for us, though, I mean, this is a moment in and it's not just this year or this month or anything like that, but really over the several years now, we have seen kind of an eroding of support for the humanities in higher education as populations of students turn towards what they perceive to be more valuable degrees.

Make the case.

Okay, So I think we think of stories as, you know, what my grandma would watch on TV, like a lot of my stories.

I mean, the second element of it, we think of it as this bonus thing we do at the end of the day to watch Netflix just to relax.

When you don't realize that stories shape almost every aspect of your life.

We're in an election year this is the most money ever spent on a Senate campaign is happening in Ohio.

How many people have seen one of the ads?

You can't avoid them, right?

They are everywhere and they're telling competing narratives of what this state is, of what the future of the country is.

Stories shape who we are and the stories we tell about ourselves.

If you have a traumatic incident in your past, one of the things you do in therapy is learn to tell a new story about yourself and what happened to you.

And so who controls those stories?

Who controls those cultural narratives make a tremendous difference.

And if you don't have the power to tell your own story, then it's told for you.

The election, I think, is a great example of that.

You know, some of the burning brain ads are telling us a certain story about immigrants in Ohio.

And if you're an immigrant in Ohio, that story's been told about you, not on your behalf.

You don't get to tell that story.

And so we actually just had Edwidge Danticat, a nurse filled with Book Award winner, a MacArthur Genius here for our free Incubator writing conference last month.

She's a Haitian-American writer who came to Ohio just two weeks maybe after the debate and said, it's a little odd to be here right now.

A strange time to be here.

But she talked about what literature and storytelling can do to combat those kind of false narratives and what can happen when you empower people to tell their stories on their own behalf in a much more complex and rounded way.

And so if you're not paying attention to the humanities, you're more likely to be manipulated, manipulated by these stories, and have less power to help shift and change the narrative.

And so I think what all of us are doing up here is trying to shift power to who tell those stories so we can help change the world in that way.

I'm glad you brought up the case of Springfield, Ohio, and the Haitian immigrant community there.

I was having a conversation with a civic leader here who's providing some resources and assistance to the community of Springfield.

And I said, do you think the city manager there or some representative of the Haitian community there might want to come to our stage to tell their story?

Because their story?

Because there's a whole narrative about them that doesn't actually include their voice?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't know if that's going to happen.

Preview of like what might happen.

There's one.

There's like a universe, one universe where that, that that will happen.

It could be this one.

I don't know.

You've brought up this important thing about misinformation and disinformation and that and the stories that come along with it.

So let's pursue that for for a second.

Mikovits Has it in your West theater, your your theater itself, your institution was the target of a kind of misinformation campaign around the impact of drag story hour.

It was it was, I think.

And as as Matt really wonderfully illustrated.

You know, there are campaigns right now of misinformation that are stories that they're they're intense.

They have intent, they're thoughtful, and they put a lot of effort to tell us something that is wrong about certain communities.

And then there was theater being a community.

Theater are probably our primary focus are the people.

So right now in our society, we see, you know, we're we're vilifying people of color in America.

We're vilifying immigrants, as you say, in Springfield, and we're vilifying the LGBTQ community in multiple ways with misinformation.

So our job as an organization and in my role, what I try to do and you are right that we have been vilified ourselves, is to change the narrative, to bring back that power, as you say.

So rather than pointing to a thing or a person to be afraid of and to hate, I think it's important that we embrace more of asset based storytelling.

When we think about the humanities.

What what makes us common where where you know, where are we not difference Where where can we develop true empathy for one another so that we can learn more about these these issues that are dividing us as a society?

So, yes, probably I say near West Theater five years ago started drive story hour in north in northeast Ohio.

We were the first organization to do that with a phenomenal partner for the first several years.

Not a peep from anybody.

It was a wonderful program.

Kids and families coming in, learning about acceptance, tolerance, reading children's books.

And I think I've mentioned to you before, you know, there are two ways that I can approach this.

Oftentimes when I'm talking to people, you could talk about the outcomes or the program itself or how many how many families are attending that we buy the books that we hand them out for free.

And sometimes that that may resonant resonate with people and sometimes it doesn't.

But I like to share with people because we have lost funding over this.

We've lost foundation support, we have lost individual support.

We have also gained some very valuable funding as well with this.

And I think those values matter.

But I have learned that as a theater person and as a lifelong storyteller, as we all are, where are we?

Where are those points of commonality?

So I often talk about my why, why, why do we do this program?

I'm a parent and a five, six years ago my oldest child was a kindergartner.

And as a parent, I think we all understand when you let go and put your kid into the school system, the fear that you have, will they make friends?

Will they be bullied?

Will they find themselves?

It's hard.

And I think all parents in this room understand how hard that is.

We were fortunate that our son is very social and he made friends.

But after a few months I visited one day for aftercare and he was playing with a new child.

And I and I was very excited.

I said, Oh, hey, you have a new friend.

And my my son said to me, Yes, I'm playing with Matt today because he doesn't have any friends.

And I look to the child and I said, Well, Matt, that's it's only a few months in the kindergarten.

You're going to make friends.

And I'm glad that my son's a friend.

And, you know, you can always count on him.

And he looks at me and he said, Well, I don't have any friends because I like dolls and I like dresses.

And that shocked me to my core.

At five years old, we're already putting these gender stereotypes on children and the innocence at five years old of I just want to play with the doll and I want to play with the dress.

But I said, Hey, you have a friend and my son and and you're going to be friends.

About a week later, a voice from behind me says, Excuse me, but are you so-and-so's parent?

And I said, Yes.

And she's already in tears.

And she says, I need you to know the impact that you had on our family a week ago.

You and your son, our child has come home every single night in tears, begging us not to go back to school, begging us to find help.

And we feel alone in this struggle and we wish there were more parents like you.

Thank you that you spoke to my child.

And in the conversation I also said to him, Hey, I'm a big guy, right?

And he goes, Oh, yeah.

And I said, I got to tell you a secret.

I love wearing costumes and dresses and I wear makeup.

So you be you, you do you.

And as long as you're happy, you're going to be fine.

And I think that resonated so so when I get this information, but also being, you know, somebody who believes in social justice and supporting this, I really took that to heart.

And I went back to the staff and here west, and I said, how can we support more families like this?

There has to be a way that we can create safe spaces where they can come together, commune, engage with one another, and know that they are not alone in this struggle as this family felt alone.

So we found a phenomenal partner who's in this room today.

They go by veranda, Lanai and I'll I'll keep that a personal name anonymous right now.

But this individual has served on boards.

They have given back to the community.

They are a valuable small business owner and have done so much for other LGBTQ organizations.

They happened to be a drag queen, but that's a really good one and a really good one.

But they're thoughtful, they're intent, There's curriculum, everybody's background check.

It is like a mrs. Doubtfire live every time we do a program and everybody has a wonderful time, but there is a lot of misinformation.

So I find that in that example I just tried to share with you, we can talk about outcomes, we can talk about data, we can talk numbers.

I find more value in actually finding these stories to move to move the needle forward and find more acceptance in what we do.

Can we pause for an anonymous round of applause for our drag royalty?

Thank you, Mike.

What you.

The story you told reminds me of something that I often will share with audiences too, to remind them about the power of story that we are, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

And I can only imagine the impact that that story as you remind your own children of it, will have on that and the next generation of advertisers.

Thank you.

Dan, that's very kind of you.

And you yourself are a fabulous storyteller and all you do here helps push that needle forward.

I am very fortunate that, you know, we are we are allowing our children to be immersed in these programs.

And my children have gone to these programs.

And it does it makes them more accepting.

It makes them more tolerant.

So they they are leaders already.

So I see the value.

No, we're not.

Well, you know what the misinformation says.

We're not changing kids to be part of the L word.

We're teaching them that it's okay to be nice.

It's okay to be kind.

We've lost that in the digital and social media age.

I want to switch gears and talk about genre, because stories come in all shapes and sizes and and on different platforms.

I mean, for sure, one of the most popular genres right now are the, you know, film writ large.

And, you know, I mean, Netflix is the Shakespeare of today in some ways, you know, in terms of popularity.

Right.

Talk a little bit about the impact of the festival, the impact of the documentaries you share, the impact of the narrative films you share, the impact of the shorts, the platforms that they provide to, you know, emerging filmmakers.

Yeah, I think about it in two lenses.

Film to me is so powerful because it has the ability to like put you in a place.

And when you see film in an audience at a festival, in a theater, you also have this communal experience with people.

When I think about things like documentary film, I think that festivals like ours have a responsibility.

So when you said We are the stories that we tell about ourselves, I think about how we have a responsibility to be well-rounded and what that storytelling is.

And I think film historically has painted pictures, has perhaps itself contributed to misinformation.

And so how do we elevate emerging filmmakers, documentary film to sort of go behind a narrative, to maybe give us all sides of a story?

I think that it is powerful and popular because it is not actually something that somebody made up.

I think real life is sometimes stranger more interesting than fiction, and I think it is bringing to the core voices we haven't heard stories we thought we knew that we're not hearing.

And so I think it is powerful for creating two things connection and clarity.

I think documentary film or film in general has an ability to tell a story in a way that breaks something down so that it's easy to digest and understand.

I think back to the first film I saw this past year's film festival, and I always, you know, I'm not doing it on purpose, but I always get these tearjerker films and the first film out of the gate, I'm bawling.

And it was somebody on the staff said, Why would you go to that one?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But it told the story of the investigation into the boarding schools that Native children were sent to in Canada.

And there was a woman who is easily now in her fifties, sixties and never talked about this experience.

And finally they sort of said, well, you know, did you say something at the time?

And she goes, I did.

I told my mom and my mom told me to tell the police and the police told me to tell this girl.

And she, like, rattled like nine people, she told and she ended with and then my dad heard about it and he sort of like, beat me within an inch of my life.

And I never talked about it again.

What happened is she developed a drinking problem as that's how she coped.

And I immediately thought about the narrative that so many of us in America have heard about Native cultures and the rise of alcoholism and how it devastates, but never the context.

There was a reason a 12 year old starts drinking, right?

And so instantly, in a minute, it challenged everything I thought I knew about the narrative.

So one, I think that's the popularity, the connection and the clarity.

And then I will also just say that I think one of the things we are striving to do at the festival is to make sure that the breadth of humanity, of who people are is on display.

I was reminded by an actress recently who spoke at an event we had, you know, that like not every story has to be fighting against something.

We are like complex and we are joyful and we are interesting and we are flawed.

And I think the ability to not just lean into a genre of film that I think depicts the worst or the hardest, I think there's asset based storytelling that we want to make sure that we're bringing to life as well.

Because again, our responsibility is if in any way the films are shaping a narrative of how people understand an issue, a people or a community, we should strive in a lot of ways to bring balance to that wonderful, wonderful mat.

I realized that while a film festival is sort of self explanatory and a theater self explanatory literary, Cleveland is not necessarily quite as self-explanatory.

Could you provide just a really brief orientation to the work that you have led there?

Absolutely.

So how do we get more people to tell their stories?

How do we train them up?

How do we get their stories out there?

That's a lot of what we're here to do.

So I love how Cleveland in northeast Ohio has been home to Toni Morrison, Rita Dove, Mary Oliver, not just some like very good writers, but the greatest writers that we've had that shaped our narrative of who we are as a country.

And so how can we train up the next generation of people to do that?

And so one way is to provide access and reduce barriers.

So we have free writing classes at the library, at parts of town that have been historically red lines.

We have scholarships for low and low and limited income writers, regardless of their backgrounds.

We have the largest free writing conference in the country that was just held here last month.

And so if you can have people that don't just have power and money and privilege who are learning to tell their stories, that's going to shift the balance of power.

And then second, if you can get those stories out there and amplify those voices.

And so we've had specific programs for veterans, for immigrants, for black women living in the worst city in the country, for black women.

We had one of my favorite programs we ever did was Payne Essential Workers to write about their experience on the frontlines of the pandemic.

And for someone like me who got to stay home at that time and just be on Zoom to hear about an intensivist in the ICU and the nurse that broke down because they're used to losing people.

But not every single person that comes in and feeling helpless.

Those are the stories.

And when you put them together in an anthology, that's the other thing that's meaningful to me.

Instead of just having one story of that group of people, you have this kaleidoscope.

You can see multiple different people.

What it was like for lots of different essential workers from lots of different backgrounds.

That gives you a more rich and complex understanding of who they are and they can tell that story on their own terms.

And so if we can provide that access, if we can elevate those stories, that's how you sort of transform a city.

I want to rewind the tape to something you glossed over.

The largest free writing conference in the country.

The news came that picture a little more.

Sure.

So there's a lot of book festivals that are that's a little bit different, right?

When you bring in a lot of authors and you can hear readings, that's different from training.

Like I said, the next generation of writers who are coming up.

And so more than 50 events, 82 hours.

88 presenters, 30 of which are coming in from out of town.

That's events that help people generate new writing, get feedback, discover other people who are working on similar things, learn about how to publish their writing.

And this year we had a theme because Edwidge Danticat was our keynote.

She wrote a book called Create Dangerously about the immigrant artist at work that you never know when you're writing or telling the story that someone someday might risk their life to hear that story.

And she's writing from a personal experience as a Haitian-American, where people have died to tell their stories.

And so we had a whole series of panels on book bans on black masculinity, on trans writers in the state of Ohio, and even three writers talking about writing about Israel and Palestine, a topic that we all are encouraged to be silent.

We're encouraged to speak up on this.

And so when you think about writing Dangerously, a free conference that sort of opens up access, it means that anybody can tell their story.

Like that's the kind of danger I want to get into.

That's great.

That's really great.

Let us know how we can help next year, please.

One of the issues it's sort of threat to the human in the humanities is artificial intelligence.

I was reading a column this morning that I just blew my mind.

This guy said he created an AI chat bot that was literally a voice chat bot that he originally deployed against telemarketers and then just unleashed on his friends.

And I was like, Why on earth would you do that?

But the we're all in competition now with large language models, and I don't want to stick with you for for a second on this.

How do you how how do you understand this world and understand what it means to the writers you're trying to support?

Yeah, it's a topic that seems abstract or that we talk about abstractly, but it's actually impacting us already.

So first there's published authors who are having their work stolen to use to train these large language models.

I looked up just the other day, three Omega Dan Sean's novels were scooped up by these large language models to train them without their permission.

So that's local authors who are having their work taken.

Second is, Oh, shoot, I lost my train of thought.

It's not just affecting the writers who are already published.

It's the folks coming up.

So even our own Cleveland Plain Dealer has already started using AI to create short articles and even the art for some of these pieces.

And not only does that mean we have lower quality work in our hometown paper, but that we're not training up the next generation of journalists who can hold our city accountable.

So it's affecting those people, too?

Yeah, my hope is that so there's a very real present.

You know, we're not even talking about like the climate impact.

There's like a lot of other things that we could talk about what they are.

There's two things that that give me hope.

One is that whenever new technology, mass produced technology like this comes around, it actually increases the value of the handmade thing.

So what my my house is full of junk furniture that I buy as cheaply as possible.

But we do have one heirloom armchair that was my wife's father's aunts chair from the late 1800s, handmade.

And when it started to deteriorate, we re upholstered it.

My wife just watched a bunch of YouTube videos.

It turns out you can do it yourself.

We value that chair in a different way that we do.

The ones that if it broke down, we just throw it out and replace it with something else.

So it actually increases the value.

So I think there's a way in which writers and storytellers are going to be valued more because it's not just the sort of junk AI generated material that you're going to get.

And then the second thing that that pushes me is that, you know, when photog Feature came about, it made painting more interesting.

Instead of the model being photo realism, you know, perfectly painted landscape portraits, it gave us cubism, gave us impressionism, it gave us fauvism, like the places in the Cleveland Museum of Art that I'm most excited to visit.

And so when we have these large language models that can produce junk stories and just flood the market with them, what exciting new things might we writers do now?

Like, what could we create that we haven't even tried before?

That's what gets me going.

That's great.

That that's a really that's a really different viewpoint on all of us.

You must be worried about it with the film festival, because there are these these models that can create film.

Yeah, I mean, I think from our perspective we are looking for integrity in the work and sort of assurances by the creators of the content that it is in fact theirs.

I don't know that for for film, we've seen it as widespread, particularly on the independent side of it.

But I mean, I think that there's definitely something to to be alert about what you know, this is the thing about art in AI is like I don't necessarily always make the leap that the AI is creating art or it's it's stealing something to to sort of put it off as, you know, someone else is.

I do think about process and I think about how it might accelerate some of the creation of the art in a way that makes it more accessible, that allows more talent to emerge, to tell stories because there are tools and devices that make that easier, more accessible, cheaper for them to do.

And so for me, I think AI is a place of interest, more so than it is a place of fear.

And the interest is in what are the stories, what are the films, what are the images, what is the way that we're going to see emerging filmmaking happen that is different than how historically that has happened?

And what role do we have in trying to seek that out and elevate those voices in a way that would have been harder a generation ago to get that exposure and to and to get it into a festival like Siff.

So I don't know, I, I remain sort of like interested in curious more than I am afraid.

I was telling friends yesterday I had a call with a service company and a person didn't answer.

It was like a recording.

I'm like, Oh no, it's the point in the call where you just start yelling, Operator And, and the, the, the, the voice is sort of like, I'm so and so and I'm a I.

And I'm like, Oh God, And I'm here to help you, you know?

And it was the best experience, really honest to God.

Like this is light years about the recording where it's like, press this for this and that for that.

You talk to them like a human.

I said, Look, I called two days ago.

I've been waiting on a call back.

I'm so sorry about that.

What do you mean?

I. I got off the call like, this is great.

Everyone should do that.

So I'm calling her tomorrow.

You should.

I see avenues for AI to be amazing and transformative.

There is a concern definitely for creators, and I don't want to sort of like seem naive about that, but I also think there is interesting possibility in what stories that allow us to tell, to exhibit and to and to bring new voices to the fore is a much more optimistic than I thought it'd be.

That's great.

Although I wonder what Mike's thinking.

Well, I have some thoughts on.

So I'm going to piggyback on what Herman said is when we think about theater, when we think about books or movies, we think about the final product too often, and sometimes we lose the the the process.

And for me, the artistry, the heart, the humanity is in the process of the creation.

There is A.I.

that can produce scripts.

They can compose entire musicals.

There are researchers that got A.I.

together that compose an entire musical based on props.

And then after a little research, they realize it plagiarized from a show several decades ago.

So I think that it's we have to be very careful, because if we're talking about diverse voices in our humanity, I want to make sure we have diverse voices throughout the entire process leading to that product.

Because when you see the product, it is their authentic experiences that are being shared on the stage.

Now, on the other side of it, though, where I have a healthy fear, but also some optimism is as we're leaders of organizations and we're always strained on capacity and size and budgets, there is value in when we're a director and we're talking to a scenic designer and we have all these ideas in our head and we throw some promise at them of, you know, like I'm directing Scrooge right now.

So it's, you know, we talk about capitalism, we talk about greed, redemption.

We talk about class structures in 19th century London.

And these are all these random words that are coming out of my mouth as a director.

But the scenic designer is brilliant in moving that forward to say, Well, before I step forward as an artist, let me help the director communicate their inspiration to me through the process so that we are more value using our time, more valuably.

There is also very, very, you know, and we've learned through Zoom and through other, you know, note taking administration in ticketing and understanding our audiences.

There is some value there in marketing in what we do.

So I do want to see where we can embrace a more on the administrative side or with smaller organizations.

But I will always be hesitant going too far when it becomes process and product of, you know, the art form that we're creating out of respect to all that we work with as well.

I'm so glad that you mentioned process because I know there's a lot of students in this room from the Honors College and elsewhere.

And that's where I get concerned, is that when you can skip this step of learning, of drafting, of messing up, you lose the valuable hours, the 10000 hours you need to get good at something you don't.

You don't go to the gym and say, you know what, I'm going to design a robot to lift these weights for me.

The difficulty is the point.

The point, the reason that you up that weight is so it's harder the next time you do it.

So you get stronger.

And writing and plays and film is that way to the process.

The difficulty, the process, the problems you run into.

That's not a step you skip.

That's the point.

There was actually I was just on Twitter this morning and The Paris Review tweeted out a quote from a Toni Morrison interview that they did with her years ago where she's made this exact point.

She's like, the trouble you run into in writing, the struggle is more important than even publishing your work is the reason to do it.

And so when we use these tools to try to skip the learning process, it's is devaluing all of us, I think.

I do think that there's a balance.

And there was a young man who I spoke to in the lobby earlier who's a filmmaker, and he talked about a project or I won't spoil this.

He talks about this amazing project he's doing and all of the work that went into the back end, like learning language, hiring translators, historical research, going back to like the 16 and 1700s long.

Did it take you to do that now years rate?

But if he were to use an AI and has technology to having done that research to help accelerate the creation of the body of work, that's the thing that I'm saying.

Right.

And so if if the technology could enable a young person who have access to hordes of cash to produce an artistic work that is premised on a lot of the like struggle that you're talking about, I don't know that that's a terrible thing that gets me a story from a person that I might not have otherwise gotten the story from because he has some tools that enable him to like more efficiently, effectively and cheaply, you know, bring that from his head to a concept to market.

That's the only thing.

And saying, okay, okay, So there's so many ways you want to go with that, but we're going to open it up to questions from the audience.

Hermy and Malone like over Taz and that one.

Cam, thank you so much.

This is the city club.

I am Dan Waltrip and we're it's now time for the Q&A.

If you have a question, just raise your hand.

And one of my colleagues will let you know when you can get to the microphone.

If you'd like to text your question, you can text it to 3305415794.

The number again is 3305415794.

And we will do our best to work it into the program.

May we have our first question, please?

I'm going to use one of our text questions to get us started.

Thanks to those who have sent them.

Was there a particular story that inspired our amazing panelists to embark on a career centered on storytelling?

A particular story?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So no surprise.

Yeah, of I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and I'm a six foot 4 to 50.

And I did what everybody told me to do and I played football and I was miserable.

I was bad, but I was miserable.

And there was just my soul was missing.

And it just I went through the motions and.

A story that actually changed my life was it was kind of twofold.

One, I had a friend that took me to a national tour of Lake Mills, and I fell in love with Xavier, the villain, and I was like, Oh my gosh.

And he's enormous, like me.

And I can be that and I like to sing.

And then I had a friend say to me it was in high school junior year, and he said, I'm auditioning for The Crucible, Come on, audition with me.

I'm scared.

And I said, Well, if I get in, I don't have to do track, which is a requirement.

And I don't if you know me, you know, I don't like to run.

So I was like, Yeah, I'll do that.

And I got cast and I, I shut the door on all those things and I fully embraced a performer's life.

I thought I was incredibly, incredibly lucky, though, that, you know, I got to work as a professional actor for a very long time.

But in living in New York, I also got deep into social justice and working with the formerly incarcerated and helping them, you know, reclaim their lives and reclaim their power to pay child support to get a job, to help to help them put food on the table.

And so I'm thankful for all of those experiences, because now, as a leader of an organization, I think, you know, especially in your West Theater, not just about the art, it's not just about the platforms that we do, but it is about how are we changing our community and lifting other people up.

So I'm thankful for a lot of experiences and stories that helped drive me forward.

But also I have to be very mindful that I represent a very certain story as a cisgender, straight white male.

So my job as a leader of this organization is ensuring you have my story.

So now I need to surround the organization with all the other stories and the diversity of the organization and in leadership at the board level so that we have a variety of stories that we can move forward as well.

So sorry a little tangent, but my first career was as a journalist and the story I did that got me hooked on this was in college freshman year.

A friend of mine had gotten a card from their parent and a birthday card and in the school post office like pillboxes, the envelope had been slit open and the cash had been taken out.

And the upperclassman were like, Oh my gosh, there's such a thing with this.

Post office happens all the time.

We complain about it as anything I like.

Well, somebody should write a story about it and they're like, okay, freshmen, you know, whatever.

So I do the story.

Very proud of the story.

Literally within a week, the US Postal Police arrested multiple people.

Now, here's the thing.

If you know anything about postal investigations, this has been going on for a minute.

But I just felt like I wrote this story and people were arrested.

I mean, justice, you know, And every time I went to the post office, the new manager was like, Miss Malone, what do you need?

What do you good feeling good about?

It's great.

It's great.

But the thing I always loved about being a reporter is finding the story.

And if you if you read newspapers anymore, if you read them online, you'll often find a story will start with an anecdote.

It starts with that because that's the thing that makes it real.

So I have no idea.

With the cost of home heating oil was in Boston in 1999, but I do remember the woman I interviewed and being in her kitchen and seeing that she slept on her kitchen table with her oven door open because that is so she could afford to stay warm overnight.

It is the story of how that economic crisis was impacting people that always sort of drew me to that.

So for me, the story was was through journalism.

It's hard to pick just one.

But I think, you know, one of the fun things about stories is that they there's hinge moments.

They're stories that take you from one journey of life to another.

And one that I'm thinking of now is, you know, a lot of what you read or what I read in high school, both by choice, but also what I was given was like Michael was saying, stories that reinforce or provide a mirror for my own experience.

They're like, by and about straight, white Christian men.

And I'm like, I see myself, Yeah, this is me.

And so it was really powerful then to go to college and to read so many more stories that open up your experience to others.

You can always choose the life that you have or the sort of place that you were born into.

But you can choose what you read, which is takes you into other lives in other minds.

And so, you know, our hometown here, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

I have taken blue eyes for granted.

And the way that she uses that as a metaphor for internalized white supremacy really shifted my perspective.

There's also an under-discussed moment in that story, too, where two kids sort of on the beaches of Lake Erie sneak off and go to start sort of like making out and these white men come and disrupt them and start harassing them and turn their flashlight on them.

And the way that Morrison flips, the way that we normally associate light and white with goodness and dark and black for badness, that they actually the darkness that they were in was safe until these white men came and shown the light.

I'm like, Oh, that's what you can do with stories.

You can even flip our core understandings of good and bad and black and white on its head.

so delighted to see so many current and future young members of the City Club here.

I wanted to return to Dan's original question and Matt's response to it.

What are the humanities?

And it's clear they're fuzzy, they're broad, There are lots of definitions.

It's also clear that that concept changes over time.

So my question to you is, coming out of Western modernity, the humanities represents, as you all defined it, something about humans.

Do you think it's time that the humanities embrace more deeply the notion that there are other living creatures on this planet, and in fact our humanity depends on them as well as they are us?

Yeah.

Can I just say that's a fantastic question.

I love stories like this.

That dissenter who I was just talking about, an experience that disinterred my sort of like white male experience and how transformative that was for me.

I love stories and movies that do this to a friend of mine directed a documentary film about dogs in Istanbul in which instead of trying to place a human narrative on their experience, like how we're seeing them use special camera techniques to get on their level and try to show what it would like to be like to be a dog there and how you see people as safe or unsafe.

Another another transformative book for me recently is called 15 Dogs.

About two Greek gods give 15 dogs in a vet in Toronto.

The human intelligence and self-awareness.

And some of these dogs like create their own language and use it to express themselves.

One basically becomes a dog poet.

The other dogs, though, the other half of them turn on that group and say, You are betraying what it means to be a dog.

This is taking us further away from our essential darkness, like these stories that dissent or what we think of as being human and put us in the minds of other animals.

Like you said, we're in a climate crisis.

We think of ourselves as the center of the story of this world.

But nature isn't out there.

We are nature.

We are part of nature.

And if you can dissenter yourself, that's another way to sort of shift the narrative of these stories.

It's like that, that film, My Octopus friend.

Yeah, right.

I was actually going to go to an environment as well, so I'm coming back to Cleveland after eight years of living in New Orleans, which is a city that really kind of sits on the precipice of of climate crisis.

And I've actually been in conversations with people who are from towns that don't exist anymore.

They are literally underwater.

And so I think you think about, again, like people are part of this story, but there's this sort of interdependence we have with nature and with environment and how that not only affects us like poor us, our home owners, insurance, but more importantly, I think the ecosystem of, you know, animals and and other, you know, natural elements that we all need to sort of survive and thrive.

And we can see the impact on how we live our lives in a place like New Orleans that is driven entirely by what's happening in our environment, our seas, our trees, you know, all of that.

Let's go to our next question.

Hi, my name is Jordan Misner.

I'm a film major here at Cleveland State, but I'm also a community theater actor and an avid reader on YouTube.

Checking all the boxes, three for three.

Welcome home.

So my question is, can you speak on the relationship between different art forms and how they can work together to evoke change?

Excellent question.

Well, in the theater, I think they're all there.

They're very clearly blended in the theater.

You know, we start with composition and scripts and we require authors and and we need those artist experiences to create a story that I think we can draw from, that we can grow from that will spark good debates and challenged norms.

We take those words on the page and those notes and lyrics, and we do then employ the visual arts quite a bit, not only through scenic design but props, lighting design and creating environments and such and paints and and believe me, I see the budgets and then we support a lot of artists doing that.

And we're always going to we're proud of that work.

And then obviously all of these things come together for, for my industry into this product.

But the process is definitely includes the literary, the the visual arts and the performing arts.

And that's what I really love about theater.

It's such a collaborative process.

You know, you see a show and you're celebrating the actors on stage, but there's five times more people that have been day in and day out putting this thing together.

And honestly, a secret that I'll share with you is and right when we're about to go on during Tech Week and we're exhausted and and we're dealing with our emotions, it's usually when the director says, all you need now is an audience.

And that's what I love about theater is you provide the final piece of our product.

Your energy is palpable to us on stage.

And we and I as an audience member, we hope you feel it from us.

try to keep it the same, whatever.

So I think I would agree with the similar the elements of composition.

You know, film starts with a script, which is, you know, words on a page.

But the question you posed referenced sort of like social change or change.

And I want to just make a note that goes back to Dan's question about genre and documentary film.

And it's one of the reasons I find that genre personally so powerful is because it is often asking something of us.

It is.

It is like, see this story, understand this issue, but then go out, do something about it.

And so I've been really privileged to have known some incredible filmmakers who have documented harrowing situations but are not just satisfied with the documentary of it, who then go and advocate for policy change to make it so this doesn't have to be a recurring story that gets told for generations.

And so I do think, yeah, the artistry and the collaboration definitely come together in the piece.

But I think there's something, particularly in documentary film, that lends to that social change a little bit more, where people leave not only with a new understanding but an inspiration and a spurring to act on behalf of the unjust or bizarre or this is amazing more as it should have.

It's it's always something terrible.

It can be something that's great.

And how do we grow this across the country or our community?

But I think that's a uniqueness that I definitely find in documentary film.

I Well, hi, my name is Heather Adler Smith.

I'm the executive artistic director of Tailspin and Children's Theater.

And one of the things I love about the conversation we're having is this through line about the necessity of connection that comes from our storytelling.

And so one of the things that I'd like to ask about that I appreciate you touching on the ways that you've intentionally eliminated some barriers to access, but I think often in traditional spaces, and I put that firmly in quotes, but in traditional spaces, there's a lot of unspoken barriers and a lot of unspoken systems that if you don't have the familiarity to navigate them can be firm barriers.

And I'm thinking in particular about our conversation around diverse voices and how often disabled communities are left out of those conversations.

So I'm wondering what we collectively can do to ensure that the stories that we're experiencing are diverse and that the people in the room are diverse.

And what we can do as leaders to eliminate those barriers.

So I think I touched upon this earlier of one of the first things that I did when joining there was theater is look at the makeup of the organization.

And knowing what I represented, it was critical that we had diversity at the board level and in the artistic leadership.

And I am incredibly proud of all of our leaders that collectively we move the organization forward.

I'm honored to represent the organization today.

But, you know, we have developed a culture, I believe, at our organization, where all voices are empowered and everybody at my organization is comfortable saying, Mike, no, Mike is wrong.

And I listen to them.

I have I think it's incredibly important for leaders to be humble.

I think ego really derails an organization and the and what you are talking about today, prior to COVID, while I was there, the organization did transition to a pay what you choose organization in an effort to ensure that if we are going to have diverse storytelling and if we are going to try to create social justice, then we need to ensure that the theater arts, that our organization is accessible, then we France and then COVID hit.

And then after COVID, we spent a lot of time in grantmaking and generating funds to expand the organization, because we understand that we're community theater and we're accessible to all but all may not be able to get to us.

So transports being a key barrier and within the racist structures of the city, we have worked incredibly hard to expand our programing externally, to go to schools, to go to community centers, creative aging programs.

So the more that we're able to go out and try to, you know, circumvent or jump over these barriers, then we're building key relationships and trying to solve problems moving forward.

We still have a long way to go because some of the stuff that we're doing, if you have anything to add, I would just say that.

So I started at the film festival in June and one of the first things I did is community listening.

I really wanted to hear from people.

We did it in person, we did it through surveys.

And one of the things I was trying to get at were barriers and so I think we've heard everything from like parking to price points, you know, etc.. And so we're looking at how to best make one.

The festival truly accessible for folks, but also that people feel like it's representative, that it's for them.

I think one of the biggest barriers at the film festival is like being an insider.

I think if people would come to the film festival and come in for a really long time, they know how to use the film guide and they know where everything is.

I know how everything works and I have heard like this is intimidating for people.

If I've never come to, I don't know where I'm supposed to go.

I don't know who I'm supposed to ask for stuff.

I see my friend raising her hand back there.

Yeah.

And so for us, I think part of this is how do we make the experience of coming to the festival from the moment we start to promote what the films are and tickets going on sale, How do we ensure that people feel like this is for them?

And so there are obviously like ADAS things and translators and interpreters and things like that.

But I also feel like I want to make sure that this is a space where people not only see their stories reflected, but can see themselves there and feel comfortable being, you know, in the audience with us.

I feel to and I think you're doing that and one of the reasons we brought the city club to we're so excited to bring City Club to this space is that it's on the first floor.

People can roll right in and and we have these windows that means that everybody can see in and it's very transparent.

People see themselves.

Let's get one more question, please.

So my question is for those of us that are creators.

So what do you think makes a truly great story?

We're still retelling stories like from centuries ago, from the beginning of time because they're so great, and especially in this age of accessibility where it's easier than ever for anyone to make a story in this age of new technology where making something that looks really good is becoming easier and easier.

How do you cut through that, like endless sea of mediocrity to make something that's like truly, truly great that can like really last?

What a great question.

That artist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know this is a cliche answer, but tell the story that only you can tell.

I'm thinking of one of our favorite writers in town, Cortez Harris.

Who?

Oh, yeah.

People.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who came up through S.A.T.

schools and had trouble reading and was pulled out into remedial classes because of that and felt stigmatized.

Felt, you know, like in that way that you're not in the normal classes with the normal kids, but had a teacher that helped him see that he's not deficient.

He's different.

And that difference can actually be a benefit.

And he went on to become a CMT Elementary School teacher himself, where he could leverage that difference to teach other kids who had similar struggles because he understood them better than some of the other teachers could.

He went on to write a poetry collection.

One of my favorites of the last ten years called We Made It to School Alive.

That tells the story of a school year, a school day from beginning to end.

And each poem is from the perspective of a different person.

It involved teachers, students, parents, administrators.

And you get this sort of kaleidoscopic view of what public school education is, the systemic problems, but the way that there's life and joy and assets within that too, and that poetry collection, I think he was on the stage.

I believe the City Club has been able to talk to parents and teachers and students across the region.

It landed him a six figure book deal, and his debut picture book about the childhood of James Baldwin comes out next year.

Come on.

Like, who else could tell that story and then take it to that direction, this forum is also the Larry and Barbara Robinson Family Foundation Forum.

The Robinsons have served the Greater Cleveland Cultural Arts and business community for decades, Larry, and active civic and community leaders who serve the City Club president in 1972 expanded his family's jewelry store, JB Robinson Jewelers, into a national chain.

His wife, Barbara, spent her life at the forefront of efforts to promote and support arts and culture in Northeast Ohio and nationally.

Among her many leadership positions, she led the Ohio Arts Council for 13 years, transforming the organization into one of the nation's most respected state arts councils.

We are grateful for the support of the Robinson family who make this annual forum possible.

The City Club would like to welcome students joining us from Cleveland Heights High School and Youth Opportunities Unlimited and the Mandel Honors College High School's Honors College students.

We would also like to welcome guests at the table hosted by the Cleveland Foundation Living State University Honors College, Cuyahoga Community College, Literary, Cleveland, Mandel Foundation and nearest theater.

Thank you all for being here today.

Coming up at the City Club on Thursday, October 17, we are talking health equity and we will welcome Dr. Alan Stanford, former regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of the mid-Atlantic, where she was appointed by President Biden.

She will discuss her book, Take Care of Them Like My Own Faith, Fortitude and a Surgeon's Fight for Health Justice.

You can get tickets for this forum and learn more about others at City Club dot org.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to Jamin Mack, Michael and Matt.

I am Nigam and Strider and this forum is now adjourned for information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club.

Go to City Club Dawg.

Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideastream Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, Fond of Greater Cleveland, Inc..