Connecting with Rebecca Brown Adelman and Trent Norman on Practicing Social Justice

[INTRODUCTION]


[00:00:00] Alex: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 


[00:00:06] Cristina: Whether that's with our families, co-workers or even ourselves. 


[00:00:09] Alex: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.


[00:00:12] Cristina: This is Cristina Amigoni. 


[00:00:13] Alex: And this is Alex Cullimore. Let’s dive in.


[00:00:15] Cristina: Let’s dive in. 


[00:00:18] GROUP: Authenticity means freedom. 


Authenticity means going with your gut.


Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.


Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself. 


It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.


Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be. 


It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.


[INTERVIEW]


[00:00:56] Alex: Well, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Uncover the Human. This week, we actually have two guests, Trent Norman and Rebecca Brown Adelman. They come to us from Affinity Arts Consulting, which is a social justice theater organization. Trent and Rebecca, I’ve known for quite some time. Really excited to have you guys on the podcast. Welcome Trent and Rebecca.


[00:01:11] CA: Welcome.


[00:01:12] Rebecca: Thank you.


[00:01:13] Trent: Thank you. Happy to be here.


[00:01:14] Alex: Let’s get into it. A little bit on you guys’ background, if you guys wanted to just give a short version of your guys’ story, how you go into some of the work you’re doing, what you like. Rebecca, you want to start this off?


[00:01:24] Rebecca: Sure. Trent and I met back in 1999. Was it? We were much younger than we are now. At the time, a colleague of ours, Matthew Lopez Phillips had said, “Hey! You two should meet” because I have been talking to Matthew about a program that I wanted to start at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He knew that Trent was also a theater person. He said, “You two should really meet.” We met and that was pretty much it. 


I had this idea of starting a theater company that would create a sense of community on campus and address issues that impacted community on the campus. Then meeting Trent, I think took that vision and exploded it into a million different ways. I think that we ended up really becoming an ensemble that dealt not just with community issues, but deeply with social justice and change. I think we impacted the University, but I think we also impacted and have since impacted organizations and communities all over the country. In addition to meeting incredible human beings, Alex, you are one of them. Also, I mean, I will say ultimately changing. I am not the same person that I was when I started that experience and have I think changed remarkably because of it.


[00:02:59] Alex: I hadn’t met you yet — I met you guys the last three years in college when I was in the troupe. That was very fun. That’s to date still I think my favorite job. That was a really fun time. 


[00:03:09] Rebecca: That’s great. It still could be your job because we’re always looking for actors to perform with us, so you could still be working with Affinity Arts, just FYI.


[00:03:19] Alex: That would be awesome. We won’t go through the job interview. That would be the second podcast. Trent, if you want to give a little of your background too, how you got into this.


[00:03:30] Trent: The professional journey really started for me when I was an undergrad. There was a group of white students. I went to a small Liberal Arts College and they invited the grand exalted cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan to come speak on campus because they wanted publicity. It’s what they wanted because this person was getting a lot of publicity at that time. Having a very small BIPOC population, queer population, disabled populations that apparently made it a serving institution and everybody was like, “Wait a minute! What are we doing here?” That really kind of started me down this journey of thinking more than just about, “What does this mean for me?” but what does this mean in the context of where I live and who are the people around me. 


They didn’t have a black student organization, so I started that. We created a national non-for-profit organization, which has long gone away, but that was a part of the process as well to do something in response to this. It became more than just responding to that incident of wanting to invite this person down and interacting with others, fellow students, and media, and the organization in trying to deal with all the impact of the fallout coming to a small place. But for me, it became kind of an insight into, “Oh! There’s more to what’s going on in the world.” I started working at that institution. That was my foray into higher ed and I learned a lot about gender violence and sexual assaults. We were doing a lot of sexual assault work there in that role that I was in.


It has just kind of grown from there. It’s always been a part of us trying to make diversity, equity, and inclusion. Although we did just hear justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, which stands for JEDI, which I’m absolutely loving. That’s just been a part of how I wanted to show up and I have pursued that in ways that have been direct and indirect. Like I’m doing a job here, but where is it, what does it mean?  From teaching people to ski, to working directly around changing an organization, to working with medical students. It has just kind of been there as a part of the way that I try to engage the world, out of a sense of responsibility to contribute something that was positive. Creating the world that was better than how I left it.


[00:05:44] Alex: It’s one of the fun things about social justice work in general is that, once that lid is open and you get to like see into it and see some of the influences there and then start to notice it in yourself, notice it in everything that you see, every interaction you’re watching. You can’t put the lid back on that. It’s part of your life forever.


[00:06:01] Rebecca: It was interesting Trent that you started from your experiences in college, because I think as you know, a lot of the work that we do, we talk about how identity matters, and how examination of your identity, and identity of others and the cultural sort of implications of identity. It has had me. Once you open that lid, you can’t close it back up and it has me doing a whole reexamination of myself as a young white woman in college in sort of different experiences, where race mattered. I wasn’t the ally that I could have been. I think there are times that I was an ally. I think there are times that I was trying to be a white savior, and then I think there were just times that I just didn’t do what an ally should have done or would have done. That’s been a really interesting examination too.


[00:07:01] Alex: That’s actually part of at least what we did when I was working with you guys and I assume that there’s still very similar components since we’ve talked with Affinity Arts Consulting. You get a chance in this public theater space where you get to like — you can go through a sketch, but you also get to practice what you would do as an ally. You get to get up and interact with the people who are still taking the same characters as they were in the sketches, and you get a chance to play out what does this scenario feel like.


One thing that I think is incredibly important that we don’t really get a lot of when we talk about it, but diversity, equity, inclusion, you need to practice these things over and over again. But the only practice most people get is in the real world where the stakes are high or once an opportunity is missed, people don’t go back and readdress it, at which point, it just becomes this awkward thing left in the hanging. It’s interesting to get that chance to actually be able to practice these things in a lower stakes environment than the middle of a workplace.


[00:07:58] Rebecca: It has me thinking about what you are talking about in your first podcast around authenticity. I was making the connection to that earlier, because you do talk about that idea that organizations bring people together and hope that they’re going to be successful without giving them any opportunity to find out how to work in groups. The work that we do is, as Augusto Boal would call it, rehearsal for real life because we have this expectation that people should be able to talk about issues, let’s say issues of race. But we don’t allow an opportunity for people to really practice what that looks like or how they can take care of themselves around it, if it is something that deeply impacts them around identity. It’s like there’s just — we just have these expectations to have people be in ways where the risks are too high without being able to have an opportunity to practice them in some sort of safe facilitated way.


[00:08:58] Cristina:  I find that the gap between intentions and actions is so big, because when you were talking about being an ally or feeling like you weren’t an ally, I can definitely relate to that as a white woman or half white. My other half is Puerto Rican, but I grew up in Italy. When I moved to the US, I was very naïve and very unaware of the racial inequities of the US and I really didn’t understand that for a long time. I just couldn’t understand the whole injustice based on somebody’s skin color. It just was foreign to me. It’s like, I don’t understand what’s — it’s the skin color, it’s just color. What’s the big deal? I had to learn a lot from that in college and in high school.


After that, I always felt like I should be an ally, but I don’t know how to be an ally and which do I fall into? Am I the white woman or the Hispanic woman? Am I a woman or am I a human being? Where do I stand?


[00:10:01] Trent: Part of this place that we land in is that it’s a zero-sum game, that you’re either or, that it’s got to be this thing or that, it’s got to be — the race is either good for white people or it’s not good for white people, it’s good for brown people. That’s a part of the function of it, that it becomes an either or and there’s not a lot of space for growth, understanding for multiple experiences and perspectives on things that either you have to — we’re talking about race and we’re not — just don’t talk about race. Well then, we’re not talking about this experience. Well, why are we talking about this? It becomes just this weird dichotomy in this reductive point of view that doesn’t serve anyone, and it’s really harming all of us.


[00:10:43] Rebecca: Not doing it doesn’t make it not go away.


[00:10:47] Trent: Yeah.


[00:10:47] Cristina: So much so.


[00:10:49] Trent: A lot of our — so our training, we start with a quote from Wynton Marsalis, talking about race and jazz. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Ken Burns series on jazz and one of the things that he said is, “The more we run from it, the more we run into it.” That’s really, the more that we don’t do this, the harder it’s going to be for us to actually do it.


[00:11:06] Alex: Definitely leaning in feels like the important thing to that. Not avoiding it, not ignoring it. Given the difficulty of leaning in, of understanding these things, have you guys found good patterns in terms of in ways people might want to educate themselves or in ways that you found helpful to either stop your own mental cycles if you feel like you’re trying to expand into a new space, or learn something new, or take on a new view point?  Have you found good strategies around some of the difficult portions of walking yourself through that work or walking into the work?


[00:11:36] Rebecca: Work wise, professionally as facilitators, reading is great, watching documentaries is great and also facilitated experiences I feel are key. Experiences that bring out situations that feel very relatable, and then really having an opportunity to engage with those situations, and really be able to learn from one another so that it is a community learning experience rather than just an individual learning experience. There are also foundations that Trent and I use that are really the groundwork for everything that we do. Trent mentioned that quote, which is so important, but then, there are also foundations that are sort of helpful tools to help people navigate the challenges around talking about difficult issues.


[00:12:34] Alex: When you talk about hard conversations, it’s not so different from just — we put a lot of extra stigma on it when we decide that it takes on the realm of diversity, equity, inclusion. We can either — there’s a lot of extra shame or we talk ourselves out of having a conversation because it is tied to something that might be in an area we feel too ambiguous about, we feel too worried about. But it’s not so different from just having an awkward conversation with a friend, a boss, asking for a raise or just saying “I didn’t like how that went.” These are all similar conversations we can learn something from. We just sometimes at least, internally, I feel there’s an extra layer that sometimes feels hard to unpack when you’re also working in the social justice realm.


[00:13:16] Trent: You got to quit trying to be right all the time. Everybody is always trying to be right, right in an intellectual sense, like in the moral sense, right in the equitable or a just sense, and we just have to stop trying to be right and start trying to be right, and do right. It looks messy and challenging. Trying to do the hard things, it doesn’t look pretty all the time and you’re going to make mistakes. Part of my journey is living with that reality of that ego, trying to be right, trying to not be perfect all the time, which is hard. It feels like sometimes there are really huge consequences for the justice, equity, diversity, inclusion realm.


[00:13:59] Rebecca: I think the experience too, for say white women around race, I really don’t know what it is for men. I’d be so curious about men around sexism and gender, is that I think there’s also a fear of creating harm and impacting someone. When I’m working with other white people and particularly white women, I talk about like it’s — what Trent has said, like you can’t do something hard and not make mistakes. If you make a mistake, what do you do with it? It’s not about you’re going to make an impact. Like sometimes, your very presence makes an impact. That is about you, and not about you and how do you stay present with that and be real in it.


[00:14:43] Trent: You used to say, Rebecca about — I think it’s right around the time the Michael Richards thing came— where he was saying, I guess I won’t say it on your podcast so you don’t get in trouble, but he was saying that word. He said it like eight times and people are like, “Oh, seven is fine. Eight, no, don’t say that.” But we play this game of “find the racist”, right? 


[00:15:03] Rebecca: Right.


[00:15:04] Trent: When I think about like male and male identity, it’s around — if we’re going to find the sexist, it’d better not be me. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be. It’d better not be me. I’m not going to be it. There’s a whole lot of excuse building and a whole lot of like, “I don’t want to deal with this because it makes me feel bad.” Which is a weird thing, like, “It makes me feel bad.” Like you are living with that.


[00:15:30] Rebecca: It goes to that thing too, that Trevor Noah just did around, “Where Are The Good Apples”  He was talking about that with respect to law enforcement, and Black Lives Matter and the murder of George Floyd. But he was saying, “People are like — well, there’s just some bad apples, but where are the good?” Instead of focusing on  “Oh, Michael Richards is just a racist.” Yeah, he had that moment and yeah, where were the good apples? Like what happened? We just let this person — like that’s the other thing too. It’s like, how do we also bring people in rather than like, “Wow! You’re messing up”.


I think that’s the other thing too, that people are so afraid of messing up because they feel so alone when they do it, because everybody is like, “Okay. That’s your — whoa! I’m not going to touch that.” How can we be a community around it? I mean, so it’s not that — how can we all look at this from a framework of a community perspective rather than just an individualized one?


[00:16:32] Cristina: Like Trent mentioned earlier is, ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Thinking back on the sexist piece from male perspective, whenever brought that up in the past to men and, Alex excluded, they have been always” “Well, I don’t do that. I treat women right, so why should I do anything about it? I don’t see it. It’s not true.”


[00:16:55] Rebecca: Where are the good apples?


[00:16:57] Cristina: I actually had that conversation with my husband recently, because I’ve been bringing it up quite a bit and he was like, “Do you think that I do that?” I’m like, “It’s not about you doing,  it’s the fact that I don’t see you doing anything to fix it. What are you doing to make it better?” 


[00:17:10] Trent: What does it mean to you if you do some of it? What do we do with that? We’re reading a book by Kate Manne called Entitled. Where Kate talks about the cost that females are paying for men’s existence. There are parts of that I’m like, “Oh man! That’s hard to hear. Oh! I don’t want to be that person. Do I have an attitude where sometimes I think that all this stuff around the house needs to be — oh, shit!” That’s just hard. You can’t just address the Harvey Weinsteins and the Bill Cosbys and those things, like the pay gap. Those things are important and so is what happens when you’re interacting with people that are in your life in a regular basis.


[00:17:52] Rebecca: Yeah, your own self-examination. Really, I think my growth around both of those were around race. It was when I saw that I could have done better. When I reflected on like yeah, I just could have done better, and what does that mean. In that moment, I came off as racist. Then the other around sex and gender is like, the times that I had comments made or things were said, and I just kind of took that in and didn’t respond or didn’t even have boundaries around it. It’s like, those are the real-life moments that are learning, are pivotal learning opportunities. We try to create those pivotal learning moments so that we’re doing it in real life and we’re also doing it in a practiced situation and opportunity.


[00:18:48] Alex: I will chime in as the token white male of the podcast this time.


[00:18:52] Trent: Wait! You’re white?


[00:18:53] Alex: Wait! What?


[00:18:54] Cristina: Wait! What? You are a man?


[00:18:59] Alex: I remember getting into some of this work and I would always joke with you guys that you kept casting me as the bad guy, antagonist of the situation and in some of the scenarios. It took me a little while to start to put together: “right, because that’s common expression here”. This is my part in the play.  This is understanding that in myself and very much to your point, Rebecca, I can look back at many times where — a lot more times where I didn’t say something and I wish I would have said something. I wish I would have interjected with something. You see something that feels uncomfortable, but the default reaction is far too easy to be — if I just wait until the situation ends, then I can go home, or whatever, or I can leave the situation. Which is actually I think one of the more defining qualities of privilege, is that ability to say, “For now, I’m not going to take that problem on. Now, that’s no longer part of my experience. I’m just going to wait it out and then I don’t have to feel uncomfortable about it.”


There are two kinds of sides, and I think Trent, you highlighted it when you were talking about first getting into the work. And Rebecca, you had the other section. You get into some of the work understanding social inequities and how we have just common patterns that we all have to live with an experience or benefit from/contribute to. Then you take this in both ways, learning a lot internally about “what does this mean for me? How do I act in these ways?” And you also taking a lot of the learning externally. “What can I do to change this in the broader sense?”


I think both are kind of different tied to the same coin, because until you’ve worked on yourself and understood it and started to see these things for you, it’s very hard to bring that to other people for it to really be like, this is what I was experiencing at the time and it feels like maybe that’s what you’re experiencing too, until you have that switch inside. It can be a lot harder or maybe it’s just easier to dismiss a different experience until you do that. 


[00:20:52] Trent: That’s a really great example of how empathy should work. A big component of empathy is understanding what’s going on for people in that situation too, like where I relate too. We talk about empathy when it’s hard for someone and it’s kind of an invisible thing, but the empathy of privilege of expressing what it means to be around privilege is an important skill that you just highlighted really well. 


[00:21:15] Alex: Privilege is always invisible to those who have it. You’ll notice it and you don’t believe that it’s there supporting you or allowing you to do whatever. It’s very easy to miss and it’s very easy to dismiss. That was such a foundational pivoting point of understanding what privilege really means, and all the different weird expressions that it comes out with. To your point earlier, Trent, you’re talking about, it’s in the day-to-day interactions. If somebody was making fun of  Hollywood movies, it is right after Django Unchained or something came out, where basically, they put in a character that’s so absurdly racist, then everybody is like, “Wow! That’s really bad. Thank goodness, I’m not that.” 


It kind of gives this weird past to everybody else, because here’s this example that , “Well, I’m not that yardstick, so essentially, it’s fine.” It is in the day-to-day interaction. It is in much smaller thing, I think.


[00:22:03] Trent: It’s where the work happens.


[00:22:05] Alex: What are some of your favorites either topics or some — just especially meaningful experiences in doing this work that you’ve had? What’s something that really just sticks with you?


[00:22:15] Trent: We created this ensemble of teaching artists, activists who we said, took on these roles, and whatnot, and helped people learn. That was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done in my entire life. The individuals that came through there, I’m like, “Wow! How did I get so lucky to get involved with people who are this fantastic?” Then we do this thing, where they’re like, “Oh, no, you’re fantastic.” “Oh, no, you’re fantastic.” That’s not what I’m doing — I feel like you need to. But I do feel like that’s really one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, was the opportunity to work with people who just kept showing up every time and learned, and taught, and felt and grew together in the way that we did.


[00:22:58] Rebecca: I love doing image theater and ensemble rehearsals. I love that experience of our ensemble rehearsals and playing with image theater, which is creating human sculptures, tableaus is another way to think of it, and exploring issues in that way.


[00:23:19] Alex: That is always a fun one because people got to explain where they plugged in, and what they thought when they entered the scene, and you’ve got just all the perspectives of, “Oh! I hadn’t even thought of that side of it.” “Oh, this!” And everybody just brought something totally new every time.


[00:23:34] Trent: It’s amazing how something so simple can be so powerful. 


[00:23:38] Rebecca: The other pieces of all of the performances that we’ve done, when somebody comes up and does something and they’re doing it with an audience, like people are watching somebody do an intervention in front of a group of people. I always love the moments when everyone is taken off guard. It hasn’t been something we’ve ever seen before and everyone’s taken off guard. The audience loves it, and the person feels proud of what they did, even though they say that they feel like they’re going to throw up for getting up and trying something. And the actors are taken off guard, because they didn’t expect what was going to happen, like those are the — those as a facilitator are some of the most exciting, because they’re truly authentic, there’s truly change happening, and it’s also incredibly theatrical in the way that it’s happening too. It’s like magic. I love it.


[00:24:38] Alex: I think the ensemble is a very interesting microcosm of how we got to have some of these conversations, because you guys did a great job of creating this space, where everybody just got to come in and it was college so there was always kind of a rolling set of people. So you’d have people who had been in for a little while, that were helping everybody who is new and those would slowly cycle. But the feeling didn’t change over the course of the different ensembles. There are different people, different energies coming in, but you pause and just let it hang for a while. It works really well, especially over time as people start to get to know each other, they get more comfortable. I think there are a lot of lessons to pull out of the ensemble for how to have some of these conversations, because it was a group where we got to do that and that was what we had to do. That was why we wanted to gather, and that’s why everybody just every week was there.


I was there many years after you started it, so I don’t know if you had a lot of like super on purpose decisions of how you are going to create that space or if it just evolved over time. But that worked very well, whatever you guys had figured out there.


[00:25:46] Rebecca: Well, I mean, I think again, it goes back to what Trent said earlier, which is some of it, we just provided the space. Then the people who came into it are the people who also made it what it was. It really is quite amazing. I think virtual is important to also talk about, because I think we also had a particular container with which we held our ensembles and there was kind of a way in which things happened, that became their own ritual. When we say, “I will not let you go” that means something to people who are part of the ensemble, to say, it’s something that we would say to each other at the end of every ensemble is, “I would not let you go.” That idea that we have been creating this experience together and we continue to hold each other even when we’re not with each other. 


There was a framework with which they were held, and then it was just the people who also were a part of it. It was a very diverse ensemble too, which were a lot of different people in perspectives.


[00:26:49] Alex: I’m curious about the process of like writing some the pieces, and some of the — what goes into that? What’s the workshop looking like? How do you decide what to do?


[00:26:59] Trent: A piece is created in a lot of different ways. Sometimes one of us would have an inspiration, or something that feels like this is the way it should be talked about. Sometimes we’ll come and say, “Hey! We wanted something that lives in this setting, with this issue or concern, or topic or theme.” Something we device, which is kind of taking information, and sometimes we write, sometimes we write with ensemble members. One of my most favorite pieces was actually written by one of our ensemble members. I would say that we’ve had a bit of a learning process and what makes this thing work. There’s some technique to that around making the scene, making the scenario something that people can engage with in the format that we want them to engage with it. But in terms of like the subject matter and how they get created, man, it’s everywhere. 


[00:27:49] Rebecca: To casting also, I mean, there are times that people, we’ve got request for an issue, and we would have, say if the issue was sexual assault and we’ve had two men available and no women available. And of course, sexual assault is an issue that impacts men. Men can be victims of sexual assault. They’re also impacted by the idea that women they love are sexually assaulted, but how do you do a performance that addresses sexual assault when you have two men. That would be kind of the challenge, like, “Okay. How do we do that and how do we go deeply into that?” There would be requests to do performances on race, and there would be only white actors available. I think that’s the thing too, there are so many times that we think something has to be about something if it has the identity of the person that the subject is about, doesn’t it?


[00:28:42] Trent: Like race and racism doesn’t exist without brown people, really? It becomes like naming the form of oppresion and getting it right. Yeah, I get away from saying “ist” and “I think you’re racist, you’re sexist, whatever.” Talking about that is this global thing. It’s a form of oppression that exists that impacts all of us.


[00:29:03] Rebecca: I think also, this significance of us having worked together for so long, and having an ensemble has really influenced how we create work and how we write. I mean, we’ve been laughing that there are pieces that we have, that we wrote a long time ago that we still are using because they’re still relevant. We’re just constantly modifying them, and changing elements of them. It’s an interesting process, writing. I mean, we just recently created a scene where we did really significant deep character development on somebody you don’t even see in the performance, but the scene is about this person, the sketch is about this person.


[00:29:49] Alex: The other aspect beyond the written scene of course is the facilitation piece. The scene is performed, people get to see what has happened and then they get the chance to interact, they get a chance to either take a place of the character, or say something different, do something different. One thing you guys have done a lot of work on and actually, I was reading through your white paper a couple of weeks back, but I don’t remember what it’s called now. It’s about the facilitation piece. How do you guide those conversations? You talked a little bit about how identity guides both you as a person outside of this, and you as a facilitator in this, and you interacting with the issue at hand. I wonder if you want to talk a little bit about that, but the facilitation piece is incredibly important and complex just to try and handle.


[00:30:29] Trent: Yeah. I have messed up so many times as a facilitator. Oh my God! Like, “Oops!” What I’m thinking about now is just how do I stay present and keep the container, trying to maintain dignity for people. I definitely messed up.


[00:30:45] Rebecca: You know, it’s improvisation, because if I have an agenda when I’m facilitating, then I stop listening. I’m too caught up in what I want to have happened, or what I’m going to say that I think is going to be so brilliant, or what I want people to understand that I lose moments and I’m not present. It’s what Trent just said, it’s about being present. It’s being able to go with kind of the flow. It’s also trusting that the facilitation process is about us and not about us. That some of this is also, again, I feel like I keep saying this, but that the shift is going to happen with the community working together, with groups working together. It’s not going to be because we’re standing in front of people, making stuff happen. 


A perfect example of that is when we used to do performances around sexual assault, which I didn’t say earlier. But my professional career started in sexual assault and I used to be a counselor for survivors of sexual assault. That lead me into also an educational component around sexual assault. But we used to do these huge performances, just another party, you were in them, for all new students coming into the university. I remember, people would come up to us and say, “You can’t let people blame the victim. If somebody makes a comment about what she was wearing, you have to shut that down.” If I say, “You can’t say that.” It’s not like somebody is going to go, “You’re right. I can’t.” Of course, how could I been so stupid all this time.” But it’s more like, “Okay. It’s out there.” And if you say this out in the world in the way that you’re doing, what’s going to come back at you? 


It’s really then when other people in the audience say, “Hey! Wait a minute. I just need to respond to that. That’s not okay” or “I can’t believe this is the community we’re going to be. Like, who do we want to be coming into this new environment.” That’s the conversation. As facilitators, we’re just trying to hold that space.


[00:32:49] Cristina: In business in general as well, like holding the space as leaders, as community creators, as consultants, as advisors, as clients, you name it. As opposed to walking in with this preconceived script of this is exactly how it’s going to happen, how people are going to respond, what I’m going to do next. When it doesn’t happen, it’s resistance because it doesn’t happen that way, because it’s humans, not robots. It’s not zeroes and ones, it’s just not going to respond the same way you thought it was going to respond. Then what are you going to do? You’re going to be rigid, and impose it?


[00:33:24] Rebecca: I think as Trent said, there are times that we’ve messed up. Trent said there are times he’s messed up, but there’s been a lot of times where I’ve messed up too. I think some of that is transparency too, like we have had moments where we have said, “We don’t know what to do.” I’m thinking about the time that we had two people that got up at the same time. Like one person didn’t want to sit back down, and somebody else wanting to go up and have a conversation. We essentially had two audience members up. We also have this technique called the empty chair, which is basically where we create a performance where there’s a character that is the audience. We say that the audience imagine that you are in the scene and this is happening. The performance is played with this space for this character who we have people imagine are them.


[00:34:20] Trent: Here we go. Let’s see what happens. I think it was a transforming moment. We had, this is at the university, there was an intern of another institution who’s there for the summer, who came up towards me. He was like, “My mind is blown. That was so amazing.” It wasn’t something that we planned. I mean, it’s was like kind of being in the moment.” 


[00:34:37] Rebecca: Just because we’ve been doing this, it doesn’t mean that we know everything. We still are in process. We’re constantly in process. I say this every time I facilitate. I feel like every single time I facilitate, I learn something new. We have people say like, “What if nobody participates? What if that happens?” I think there are elements of, it’s mindset, it’s knowledge and awareness, it’s skills, and then there’s also an improvisational component. Like it’s really being able to sit comfortably in the unknown.


[00:35:12] Alex: That’s a really good way of putting it just in general. There’s just, if you go in with the agenda, it’s very difficult to change that. If you go in with a little more openness, you will require this space for that. If you want to be able to reconsider even your own thoughts, it’s going to require some space, it’s going to require the patience.


[00:35:28] Rebecca: I think another element too here is, there’s also trust. Like people want to do this. The majority of people want to have these conversations and don’t know how to do it. It’s trusting that the desire is there and that is very important and significant. That’s like your first kind of step. 


[00:35:52] Alex: That’s such a great thought that I honestly hadn’t considered, and I love that idea that most people want to have these conversations. That’s a wonderful reminder that we all want to improve. 


[00:36:02] Trent: It just kind of struck me, because I’ve been watching this documentary on Netflix called Amend. It’s so uniquely America and American. Like we are a country, a place of difference. There’s an element of like, we gotta figure it out, we want to work together. Because the 14th Amendment used as a part of when they struck down the difference of marriage and acting. Justice Kennedy wrote the affirmation and he said, “The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom and all of its dimensions, so they trust the future generations a charter protecting the rights of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.


That with this concept of trust really kind of helps me understand why we do it. It’s literally written in our guiding document, that we are going to always strive, and figure out, and try and do better and be more.


[00:37:03] Cristina: That’s very hopeful, especially coming from a country and a continent that relies more on history to fix things, a history of over 2,000 years from Roman Empire. It’s not about what I can do, it’s about “Oh! Just wait a couple of hundred years, it will fix itself. Then the next cycle of oppression will come along and then it will fix itself. Then the next cycle will come along” because that’s what we saw for 3,000 years and seeing that here, it’s like, “no, it’s about what we do today, it’s not about in 100 years from now, somebody else will fix it.”


[00:37:37] Trent: It is true. We have made progress and changed things and people are growing and wanting to make the world better.


[00:37:45] Alex: I love that term “dimensions of freedom” and we’re still discovering those dimensions of freedom. I think that’s such a great way of thinking about it. There are so many different expressions of it. I mean, it’s easy to hear the word freedom and have an idea in your head, like even if you couldn’t put total words there. You’re like, “Yeah, that’s what freedom means.” But there’s so many different layers if you dive into where freedom exists, how it exists, to what extent it exists between other people, between you, between — I love that term dimensions because I’ve never — I guess I kind of thought of it as almost like a one-dimensional word of like, it’s freedom and there’s no freedom. It’s a good illustration that there’s so many different expressions of that and very much hopeful.


[00:38:27] Rebecca: It goes back to kind of how we started because we did start off kind of chatting about kids and then talking about our professional life. It has me realizing that part of the reason I did go down the road that I did recently around who I have been up until now is watching my two daughters, and how much they are so different, and show up so differently than I did. It’s just really amazing. If I have any hope or any sense of trust, it is because of the two of them and it’s also because of our ensemble. Because the people in the ensemble are also people who like, I was not like that.


[00:39:11] Alex: The generational gap in only six years is incredible. I mean, the amount of change that we’re seeing and how fast that has become just — she got to work in some classrooms and just seeing what middle school is like these days. Sometimes in the same middle school that we went to, that we have gone through. To see the total difference in the generation 10 to 15 years, it doesn’t feel like long in the span of history, and so much has already changed. There’s so much hope here.


Barack Obama was on a podcast a few months ago, I think and he’s talking about the audacity of hope and why they titled it that and how a lot of the campaign he built was built around the idea of — obviously hope was a big portion of it, but he wanted to explain like, there’s a second layer of that. Hope isn’t just this optimism, hope is like — hope is painful, hope is like getting through the difficulties and believing there is something to be moved towards and knowing that it is not where you’re at now and knowing there’s something else you want. And hope is aspirational in that sense, it would mean it’s not in the present moment yet. You want more, you’re hoping for more and that takes a lot of courage and effort.


[00:40:20] Rebecca: He also talks about Elie Wiesel, and the holocaust and how much he admired Elie Wiesel. He said that one of the ways they helped people survive, how they helped each other survive the concentration camps was to teach the young children in the concentration camp reading and math as a way to hope that there was a future for them to use these skills. The hope that things can be different and that’s why it’s painful, is because it’s not there yet, but there’s the hope that it could be there. And yet, the hope is also what makes us stay in it, and makes us survive.


[00:41:02] Cristina: It’s the fuel to keep going, and keep trying and get over the mistakes.


[00:41:08] Alex: Guys, thank you very much for joining us on this. This is just some of the most meaningful work that I’ve gotten to do and something that impacted just my entire outlook in life and what I’d like to learn about, what I want to do better and continue to get better at. Social justice has been such a phenomenal term for just — it’s very inspirational and I’m really very grateful for you guys coming on this. 


We’d love to ask you guys; what authenticity means to you?


[00:41:37] Rebecca: Earlier, Trent and I were in a meeting earlier and I said, sometimes I just want to call or have the opportunity to say that’s bullshit. I think it’s like knowing when I’m — when I’m like being performative or when I’m full of bullshit or somebody else is. So it is being in the moment, but also without the bullshit.


[00:42:00] Alex: Where can people find you? Where should they go?


[00:42:03] Rebecca: People can find us at our website at affinityartsconsulting.com.


[00:42:08] Trent: We’re doing a session with Integrated Work called Amplify Your Impact and there’s a new one that will be coming out. They can look on that, that will be on our website. I think we’re calling it DEI. That’s for people who do a lot of diversity work and equity.


[00:42:22] Rebecca: I have to add with the DEI thing that Trent has said, I think part of it too is that that term is just getting thrown around now in such a way that it’s lost its significance and what — that’s also authenticity, it becomes about these. When people say they want to do DEI work, what does that really, really mean for your organization, or for your institution. What does that really mean for yourself? We have to stop throwing around terms and really talk about what those terms mean.


[00:42:56] Cristina: Agreed. Yeah. We did an episode actually on unpacking, throwing around DEI, the new trend of what you do as a company. I’m like, “Are you really doing it? Do you understand what you’re doing and what the end of that sentence is?”


[00:43:11] Alex: What does success look like? What are you even going for?


[00:43:14] Cristina: Yeah, it’s not just somebody’s title, VP, whatever, director.


[00:43:20] Rebecca: To be continued.


[00:43:22] Cristina: For sure.


[00:43:24] Alex: Amplify Your Impact in Affinity Arts Consulting. Thank you again so much, Tent and Rebecca. Really great to see you guys and thank you everybody for listening.


[00:43:31] Cristina: Yeah, thank you. 


[00:43:33] Trent: Thank you, Alex and thank you, Cristina 


[OUTRO]


[00:43:36] Cristina: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast. 


[00:43:39] Alex: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood. 


[00:43:45] Cristina: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 


[00:43:53] Alex: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas or questions. You can reach us at podcast wearesiamo.com, or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.


[00:44:12] Cristina: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human.


[END] 
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