when you found a small company and you're just starting out you have to do a lot of the work yourself so as a result i ended up doing props and costumes or some kind of set design on the fly very very essential universe simple set design just to get my plays up there just to help other fellow playwrights get their plays there and little by little you build a track record and then you have to get into more administrative work like how do you become a five a one c three nonprofit so you can kinds of things like that then you end up also being your own casting director so you go see other shows you see what's out there who's out there doing what you say you learn what actors you like are our company specializes in works by women and works by people of color so typically our works feature those types of people in leading roles so we're always on the lookout for women and for people of color to to star in our plays so you end up you know canvassing you know other small theater companies oh you know and then you ask them well what's so it's so light to work with with a good work with with good to work with so you end up doing a lot of that organizing budgets  again kind of learning where you can borrow props and costumes because we don't have a space so we don't have anywhere to store and things so we don't have anything as a result so it's very it's very work right now i wrote it with david composer from new york city and it's called manuel vs touch of liberty and it is a musical comedy about illegal immigration and it is inspired by the true story of a prince n undergraduate who found himself in a position where he had no papers and he got a scholarship to study classical greek and latin literature at oxford which is a dream come true for anyone majoring in the classics oh my god this is like mecca can leave the country and i stand his stories so compelling and so i have a thing that i had to write about it so we created this musical it was part of the new york musical theatre festival it was a reading series award winner it was  then we were in the next link program where they gave us a little bit of money to to produce it we had to raise a whole lot of money to produce it we won the special award for social relevance and impact special liberty won an outstanding individual performance a war we had a reading at princeton university we had a reading in new york city for inviting us to kind of you know we rewrite every phase every time we show it to the public we rewrite based on critical feedback from trusted industry colleagues and then just a couple weeks ago we were able to present it at the princeton university latino alumni conference that the gris forward tigers and musical director a professional director had a professional actor in the lead role and then i had three students and they just got a crash course in musical theater as and then they got to me so you know the way art which was really like she's like such a rock star so great if it was a real highlight i'm writing a show called the pet play is a play about people who love their pets too much and make decisions solely on their pets and not on their human companions because again we're negotiating with our new york when can they slot us in because we're we're producing actually three page plays my pet play is one and then there's another one called in the night everything is equal about a poor artist who's a cater waiter and she crosses several social taboos in asking her rich high school chums for money for her nonprofit which if you've ever had to do it's really hard to ask people for money it's just crazy  the taboos we have around that and then another play called shoo in which is about affirmative action in the eighty's and the student who kind of runs himself out to go on college interviews for his quite counterparts that are average who think that by hiring him they'll do better in the interview they're just crazy it's a crazy it's a crazy play my place crazy because i have a cat puppet and a dog  revenge you know the legend of suicide jack which is kind of a feminist western it kind of takes the western form and turns it on its head it's a comedy about two sisters who one is pretty and the other is plain and they're both very poor and the options available to the pretty one in the options available to the plain one and they sickly the pretty one remind you this is a comedy the pretty one turns to prostitution to raise money the one turns to robbing banks to put her to raise money because they're trying to build a school for the brothel so that the mad the ladies who work there and their children can at least get educated so don't have to stay there and they're shunned by the town so they can't go to the regular school so they have to build their own school and there's like a lot of kind of western cliche moments except i've turned on their head like the mail order brides actually mail order groom from ireland and there's  a kid who is a star witness in another train robbery he's the only one who has seen this train robber alive and he's a star witness being guarded by a federal marshal is like a little asian kid from san francisco and that was all inspired by work i did many many years ago with bernie one railroad where for fun they staged a fake train robbery so they got a bunch of actors pretend to be train robbers they gave the customers on this historic railroad fake wanny so when the train robbers came to rob the train he gave the fake money and i gathered a group of actors and there was this one little asian kid who wanted to be in the show and when he called me san francisco or something's so again it's coming back to that multicultural casting creating great worlds for women those are just some of the things that are kind of on on my plate right now so what reaching a common understanding i love seeing if any in people and i love hearing people laugh it's like a gift to give someone that release i really i really love that it's you nobody's going to come see your show and i have done many a show where there were two people in the audience or one person and the show's got it one person shows up my policy is the show goes on i don't care the person came they deserve to see a show i don't care if you know i would rather have it a full house because there's nothing worse than an empty theater seat in terms of sales because it expires that expires faster than bread at the supermarket you know you have to sell those tickets but if you don't yet keep going i mean that cliche the show must go on is really true is really really true so obviously it's a very tricky to w the top in this kind of job has there ever been a moment when you thought to yourself perhaps it's too hard maybe i can't do it all the time like every three months every quarter i think of it every day you know at the end of every show at the end of every play i think oh my god how much longer had i do this is this really sustainable can i do it i mean i really really want to but there are a lot of sacrifices and it takes a lot of time and if i were to you know i have paid out more of my own money in producing my shows and i have taken in i if i work for pay i work for much less than the minimum wage because if you take the number of hours i spend versus the amount of money i get it it's just the simple mathematics i figured out i get pay like not even a dollar an hour for how much i work like if i count the writing and all of the things i do yeah i get paid very very little so all the time all the time how do you figure out what you might have to make look good play good place have certain structural elements interesting characters they have action they're not just a bunch of people just sitting around talking people are doing things to each other and there has to be a beginning a middle and an end and you can test this in a play reading if nobody collapse at the end of your play then your ending is not clear or if they clap before your play is over then your play has two or three endings and i have done and i made those mistakes how do you figure out what to write is very individual that is something that cannot be taught that passion for what really gets under your skin well really moves you what you feel compelled to share with the world like there's no way i could have predicted that this story about  this undocumented prince and undergraduate would miss me so much but it does and so i keep working on that play and i keep against all odds pushing that work out there in any way i can but that passion is unteachable structure the rules of play writing teachable passion instincts when to break the rules for particular dramatic purpose or went to bend the rules that that is trial and error do a lot of play readings but that's that's the the best i can answer your question here really are so many tangible personal things that go into it so how did you first start this whole business was it something you boys wanted to do or it just kind of spread the moment you like i really love it i had always been involved in theatre as a kid i had always done plays in schools and wanted to be in shows and the and more shows and take the enter and dance and music and all that my parents couldn't afford all of that so i was limited to what i could get to on my own which in los angeles growing up was a consideration because everything is like so far apart and i was forbidden from majoring in anything artistic in college my parents said no science or engineering i think economics was a soft as they would allow me to major in you know so it wasn't until after i had left home and lived on my own i had gone to graduate school i got an undergraduate degree in engineering are a graduate degree in engineering i worked in engineering for five years and finally i was so miserable that i took a little time off and in that time i just thought to myself what would i do differently if i knew i was going to die next year and my biggest regret was that i had not spent a lot of time doing as much time as i wanted to and yet are and dance and i was too old to have any kind of dancing anything aside from you know profession personal enjoyment so i began working on my own theater degree  studios and around your city so i was working a full time engineering job and then commuting in and out of new york taking classes in acting and i looked at the bachelor fine arts degrees and the curriculum the curricula that they had and i pieced together my own b program i took movement i took voice i took singing i took dance i took shakespeare i took scene setting i took all kinds of classes that i saw being offered to other formalized programs and then i worked as an actress for a while then i wanted to go deeper and because academia is sort of like a bridge every time you kind of have to keep building up your suit so i can go back and get a e s a exam ready had a bachelor's degree so i went and i got an m f a in theater arts a university of iowa i got a full scholarship and while i was there even them i was in the acting track i took as many writing courses as i could i was the only actor in that program to write her own thesis role and so i produced a play and at one point i was like oh my god i'm in a flooded out because i'm going to flunk out of my acting program because i can't quite get it together enough to spanish when most of it was in english that was a bad move so i heard early on about titling and marketing but i produced it i got to go to the creative team i have i don't hire people because  students but i put it all together i was in it i got a faculty member to direct it i got some of my friends to be and then other people i had to audition you know because there were rules that were uncovered by my friends and and happened it was very moving experience for me so what are you most proud of like what have you done that you play that you've done i think so far i am most proud of my wormers as a sketch of the ready and i am most proud of some of the beautiful songs that i have been able to create with composer david that it was a very gifted composer and i'm very proud to to have several songs out there that i feel are are meaningful are beautiful are in demand as audition pieces first of all it's inspired by his life it is not his life if you want to read you want his life go read his memoir it is undocumented a young a dominican boy's odyssey through the immigration system by tax on his life because he wrote it he should know our place doesn't need to write because it's inspired by him you will notice elements that are similar to him but it is not him it is a composite largely inspired by him but it pulls from several other notable activists who have made their lives very public and their struggles very public in terms of copyright  stuff to my knowledge anything that is in the public domain that has appeared in a newspaper or on an interview or in something that is widely distributed is fair game and what was weird is our biggest production of the show came out the week before his memoir was released he's never seen it to my knowledge if he thing that he's been very quiet about it and i can understand why he might not want to see it because then you have this bizarre met a theatrical moment where if anyone in the audience knows he's in the audience they'll be looking at the play and then the thing at him to see his reactions and he'll feel very on the spot he also may not like musicals they may be too fluffy for him or he may not enjoy our particular brand of humor you know so many reasons or he may just be too ten minutes we're done all right so what's your favorite sean or like of music or do you guys see more of musicals or plays and what's your favorite dramatic question here it is mostly plays on the only crazy person in th theatre community does musicals i really love musicals i find them a very powerful form of theatre as a fine man a form of theatre that is not withering if you look at attendance records in american theater attendance is going down our audience is aging we are not doing a good job of introducing young people into the theater earlier you're probably none of you are really in the habit of going to see a play with your friends you go see a movie or you watch a you tube video or something like that but you won't see a play so i love musicals because there is something very visceral about music that helps convey the story in a more powerful profound way than simple words however i do know several very gifted musicians and musical theater artists who love plays because they love that stripped down essential eyes version where it's just the words and they are really captivated by that but those are my preferences i tend to prefer comedies i think that laughter opens people up and you're able to sneak in revolution because robespierre went inside and he would have been able to see if the king had banned it in the king and danica probably as it was a comedy you know those are the things that i like everyone so i will go see a political work even if it's a drama church and state right now is a really good gun control based play at new world stages i really liked up play a lot so musical but it's really good so those are my those are my favorites so in terms of like mentor texas or like other plays or a well known works that you look up to the hood what are some ones that you have drawn with a black maid working for a jewish family in south so there are many layers of hierarchy discrimination and struggle and there's really beautiful relationship between caroline and her daughter her daughter is a black activist and caroline is a black made and you know i just find their relationship the music and it is really inspiring the relationship is really inspiring me even though it's serious there's some humor in it i like the way carol churchill plays with time and space and people and the presence of historical figures in an  storytelling i love the larger gesture of hamilton which is to cast it in a very loving ethnic way speaking to the demographics of america and speaking to the immigrant population grafting today's immigrant faces on the immigrants and the change makers of yesteryear of our funny fathers what else of those really really moved me i loved the death west production spring awakening because i felt it was a wonderful way to reimagine  peace and have leading actors have their soul embodied onstage in the form of a deaf actor and their and then their physical counterpart and i just thought that was very imaginative line it helps to know someone in the theater company it helps to know a writer in the theater company helps if you're an actor how it helps to be generous to back to the playwright and volunteer for readings and go to the theatre companies thing these are just kind of general principles volunteer at a theatre company it's obviously easier theatre company has its own  a space because then there's a physical plant to maintain and you can help out with that but it's really who knows you who knows your work who trusts your work  in general i recommend if you're going to pursue acting you move close to where you want to be employed like if you want to pursue it in philly you move close to philly if you want to pursue it in new york you move to new york if you want to pursue it in chicago you move to chicago i do not recommend commuting yet it's very hard and actors have to be available like at the drop of a dive and you have to audition so if you have to commute that means you have to take all that time to get there for fifteen minutes and th come back it's much easier to fit it in if you're there already well so i don't know if you guys have any questions about this and to you know well it's been wonderful having you here me a wonderful addition to all of our interviews to you and i really hope that our viewers will enjoy and i'm sure they will and that they draw a lot of experience for special people interested in the arts like we are not we have it a sidebar with you guys thank you