Video: CJay Philip Unpacks the Importance of Arts Education
Sep 6, 2024
In this video, watch as 2024 Excellence in Theatre Education Award winner CJay Philip checks in with BroadwayWorld's own Richard Ridge to reflect on the incredible honor she received in June.
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Welcome to Backstage with Richard Ridge
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My guest, C.J. Philip, founder and creative director of dance and B. Moore theater
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programs in Baltimore is the recipient of the 2024 Excellence in Theater Education Award
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which is presented annually by Carnegie Mellon University and its Tony Award partners at the Broadway League and the American
0:29
and theater wing. Please say hello to C.J. Phillip. Hello, hello. Now, first off, where are you and how are you
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I'm doing great. I am so excited to have a few days off. It's been a very busy summer of
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theater programming, but I'm in upstate New York visiting mom. She's up in Albany area
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And yeah, that's where I started off, Albany, New York. I love that. So congratulations on your Tony Award
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Thank you. Have you been able to put this honor into some kind of perspective of what it means to you
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I'm sure it was like, wow, you're getting it. You're at the Tony Awards
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Like, have you been able to process the whole thing that you're a Tony Award winner
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You know, it's been amazing experience. And I think the most amazing thing about the experience was to have it with the folks that I love and that I do this work with
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from my husband, Winston, who produces a lot of the music for the shows that I write for young people
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to Lauren Arzo, who's one of my amazing staff members who helped nominate me along with my young people
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her husband. And we hadn't seen each other since before the pandemic. And so to meet together in New York and to experience that together, to go to the Tonys together
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and really celebrate work that we've been doing and found meaning. for years, but to have other people say, we agree, we acknowledge that this is really meaningful work
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that this is life-changing, connecting people through music, theater, and dance, and that it's important
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and we want to pause and recognize that. So that's been amazing. I think also the thing that I noticed being at the
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Tonys was that I was not accepting the award solely for myself and the work that I do, but for every teacher
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because when I tell you as the theater and education, a person, they walk up to you every two steps to say, oh my gosh, I love what you do
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I got to tell you about my teacher. So when I was in the fifth grade, like, you know what I'm going to tell you a story and you realize you're representative of people who, whose lives have been changed in are on Broadway and changing others lives because of the teachers in their lives
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So where do you keep your toty award? Well, I keep it at my home. It's actually on the piano. And with all the fun little trinkets that I got from Carnegie Mellon, I got such a beautiful gift bag and swag bag of things. And so it sits up on the piano. And I got a wonderful bottle of champagne that sits Tony's on it that also sits in our dining room on the piano
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That's some nice stuff you got that night. Yes. So your speech was absolutely glorious. I watched it yesterday. I watched it again today
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You had this star-studied audience repeat something that you tell your students. Would you tell us what that is and how that felt that night
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Yes. So I knew I wanted to include Celebrate Your Light. It's something that I wrote really in a coming from a place of
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frustration really. A lot of my classes, a lot of the theater that I do is in community
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So I, yes, I teach at different schools all throughout Baltimore at different theater companies
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I've started theater companies for organizations. But oftentimes I'm in some community room, rec center, church basement, and we're making theater
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You know what I mean? It's like those old movies. We got a barn. We got some talent
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Let's make a show. I'm doing that all the time. And so we were in this one location where we couldn't get in the community room
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There was some sort of water break, and it was a mess in there. And we were in the lobby, and it was sort of dark and dreary
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And the front desk lady was like, rah, rah, right. And I was like, oh, my gosh, the energy is not making this work for me
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And so I went home and I thought, we've got to claim this space as creative
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And we can make that statement no matter where we are, whether we are in an alley, whether we are in a hallway that was never meant to have a theater happening in a hallway, which is what we were doing
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And so I just was journaling. I journal a lot. I gratitude journal. And these words came out on the page. And this is a creative space, a shade free space
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because shade blocks my light and my light shines bright. I will not hinder my light and I celebrate your light
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The light within you shines brightens our hearts and our minds. And then I ask our students typically to say with me
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the light within you shines. And then they repeat that. And so we've been doing that song for 12 years
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And so it's just so much a part of starting a session, ending a session that I thought
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if I'm sharing anything about theater programs that Dance and Bemore does that I have done
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I've got to include celebrate your life. And it was wonderful to see how engaged and ready folks were for it
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I actually happened to be talking with someone who won for lighting
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And he turns to me and says, you don't even know, CJ, how much I needed it
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Everywhere there, we're nervous. We're like, hmm. He says, and it just, we sang
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together and my shoulders just released and I thought, wait, yeah, we're here to celebrate each
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other's light. We'll be fine. We're all here and we're together. So I love that we were able to
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have that moment. Well, for people watching, just go to watch CJ's speech at the Tony's because
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you had everybody in that beautiful Lincoln Center theater. Everybody repeated that back
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And I think it just eased everybody into realizing, you know, everybody has a light. If you go into
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the theater or not, I'm sure when you teach your students, you know, some lights haven't been
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turned up yet. Some people haven't found out how to turn them on. And what you have done is bring the
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light out in all these students. And it's something, you know, my light's always on. My glass is
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always half full, but I've been listening to your speech all this weekend and it sits in my brain
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I'm like, oh, I'm going to get up and, you know, let your light shine today. Because we all have it
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And I'm sure, you know, being an educator, what's been one of the biggest takeaways of what you've done to let these students celebrate themselves
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Tell me what it's meant to you. So it's this week especially the past month
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We normally have a summer Voices of Carmen program which is a musical adaptation of the opera Carmen that I wrote and produced years ago with my brother Kelvin in Zurich Switzerland And I put it on a shelf and thought I want to do
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that again in the United States, just not sure where or when or why. And then when I moved to
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Baltimore and I saw just the immense talent in the city and the hunger that young people have
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to be bold to try new things and have material that substantive, that's, you know, not just jazz
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hands, but that there's some meaning and there's some narrative that we can have some dialogue
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about that's really interesting to them and relevant to their lives. And so, you know
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once we did Voices of Carmen, we're always like, what's next for our young people? And so we then
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started a program, Voices of Carmen is 14 to 18, maybe 21 sometimes. So then we started a program
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called Amp Up, which is an arts mentorship program that's looking not only to be on stage
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but behind the scenes, sound design, lighting, stage management, and also being dance and be more
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teaching artists and community. And so that's 16 to 24. Well, the past month, we've been going
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to teach little bitties in our FASA fam family jam programs and small ones, second graders
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third graders and then up to fifth grade. And my teaching artists, half of them are professional
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teaching artists, educators for years. And the other half of them are students who've come up through
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AMP programs, Voices of Carmen, and they're in our teaching artist training program. And so
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it's like being in this sort of sphere or loop of, we're teaching a third grader, but I'm also teaching a 19-year-old
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who I've been teaching for 10 years, how to teach a third grader
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and they're teaching me things that I hadn't even thought of. And I'm just like, wow, this life that I get to live
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to be able to collaborate with young people. Like, genuinely, we, you know, do our class plans together
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We talk about structure and pedagogy and sort of what we want these young people to learn
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or understand or connect to. within their own communities, right? So we're leaving them with something
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not just had knowledge, but how does art and music and theater connect you
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And how can you continue to connect here at this, you know, park or this camp that you're a part of
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or in this community center? And so it's been really wonderful to be doing programming
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with young people who are also in a program. And so it's sort of doubling down on the learning and the teaching
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Now, all of these programs are free, I understand. Is that correct? Yeah, so it's been amazing. You know, when I first started Dance and Bemore, our first program was a family dance program for parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, and kids to just jam to play fun theater games, use our imagination. And part of that came out of my last tour was legally blonde, the Broadway national tour. I played the judge and I went on quite a bit for Paulette on that tour. But, you know, you leave New York City and you travel and you go
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Oh, okay, so this is America. New York is New York. America's a whole other thing. And so as I saw the country, I was like, wow, I can see technology is growing. I can see, you know, there's all of these advances, but somehow I feel like we're distancing ourselves. And the human connection is something that we're losing. And I wonder if there's a way, I'm not a researcher, and I'm sure they're going to figure it out and they're going to tell us all about it
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But I sing and dance, honey. And so what we're going to do is we're going to sing and we're going to dance together
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and start to reconnect parents with children, grandparents. And in a community dance class, that's for everyone
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That's really diverse, right? And so that was, you know, the program that we started with
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And now, child, I'm getting up there. I don't forgot the question. What was it? No, you answered beautifully
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You answered it. You answered. You know, mentorship is really important. And I've asked stars over the years and they were like, if I didn't have this teacher come up to me, I would have been on a whole other path
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Yeah. Because, you know, and I know you've had some wonderful mentors. I want to start with who I think we saw in the background
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In the beginning, your mom, besides being your wonderful mom, was your first big mentor
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Tell me. Yes. So my mom is one of the most amazing women that I know
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Her story is a movie. It really is a story to be told of the things that she came up through
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She is 85 years old. She was born in Montgomery, Alabama. And, you know, those are challenging times for her as a young black woman
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But that is where the bus boycott began. My mom volunteered and swept the
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floors in the taxi station where Dr. King and others were planning. She eavesdropped, you know
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and sort of got a sense of gathering people, creating a sense of purpose and movement and change
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in doing the small things as a community. And I think that stayed with her. She was a social
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worker. I remember that our house was in the middle of a dead end street, but it was the place
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you went when you needed help with anything, doing your taxes, filling out a form, getting free
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lunch and figuring out how to do the paperwork. Like my mom was just, it felt like our home and our
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kitchen table was the office for our whole street to get their things done to ask questions
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to not feel judged or look down on because you didn't know. And, you know, my mom had a life
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where she really struggled with not feeling accomplished or bright and still pressed through
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and pressed on. And so to just learn from her strength of character and her generosity, the way that she serves
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and gives, she still volunteers. Like, it was weird to me when I started meeting people who didn't volunteer, I was like
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what is that like for you? what do you do with your time? I mean, you don't, you just spend your time on yourself
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Like, how is, that didn't make sense to me because I, you know, my first job was volunteering
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at a daycare center. I was 14 years old. And so, you know, looking at, and my mom is a writer, but she discovered writing later
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She writes poetry and plays. And I've been in her plays in our little church basement and in her shows
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And so to see that she's like, if I have this little much talent here, this talent here, I'm going to use it to its full
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I'm going to connect and give the talents that I have, the time that I have in the most creative ways
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And I think that my mom is definitely an artist. And so seeing me be an artist my brother also is a choreographer and a wonderful teacher and dancer I think that there a joy that she has and seeing us really truly fully lived that out because she lived in a different time where it wasn like yeah just go on out there and
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you know, go to New York and be a star or to Hollywood
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Like, that was not the advice you were getting from advisors from anyone. And so to have the kind of support that she has given me over the years and my stepdad
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Oh my gosh, my stepdad, he picked me up. He'd drive me back to dance class
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And I would be singing. Let me tell you, I would sing in the basement. And I'm looking at, I'm at my mom's house
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I'm looking at the little duck that I used in my microphone. And used to be like, all in the basement
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And my brothers would be like, shut up. Like they would just feel like, I can't
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She's just squawking. And my stepdad used to be like, no, no, you don't tell her to shut up
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She's going to be on Broadway one day. And I don't know why he had that in his mind
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He said it regularly. Like, it was just something that he said. I don't know that I even thought I was going to be on Broadway one day, but he did
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And so when I did get my first Broadway show, which was Big the musical, jumping on those
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pianos and learning all I could from Susan Stroman. And I remember a bus little people came down from Albany, and he just nudged right up against me
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And he said, see what I told you? Didn't I tell you? And I was like, yes, sir, yes, you did
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And so I had parents who were like dream, believe. Now, this is simultaneously with not being a great student, getting solid Cs, maybe a C plus for most of my being so easily distracted, sort of roaming, skipping class, da, da, da, da, da, and my mom would say, she'd read my report card
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My sister now, straight A's right? She'd read my report card and be like, oh, they talk so bad about my baby
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My sister would be like, mom, it's not slander. It's the work she's doing. There was a teacher in high school that caught you in the hallway
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Yes. Who was that other mentor of yours? John Veeley. One more time
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Go ahead. Yeah, John Veeley saw me roam in the halls. Cutting up
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Just, you know, nothing better to do. I just was not that engaged in a normal classroom setting
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I love learning. To this day, I love learning. I love reading
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I'm always sort of inclined. class, a student of life. And so the way that he engaged me and introduced me to Shakespeare
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And also I was very competitive. I was an athlete. I was on the track team. And so he was like
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I think we can enter you in some of these Shakespeare competitions. I was like, okay, I can do
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competition. And so we started doing those and I would win them. And then, you know, because that
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sort of competitive spirit, I was like, why am I winning them? What is it that is connecting
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Why is someone else winning? What is it that I understand in the language and the way
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And why don't I understand it when this? So then I started paying attention to the details
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And so he then invited me to do Shakespeare in the park
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I was a sprite in The Tempest. And I understudied Charlene Wooder and got to learn from her, her work ethic
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combined with a joy and a laugh that is just infectious and contagious
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And about a year and a half ago, I reached out to her
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She remembered me. We're from the same hometown. And so she came in and just hung out with my young people on a Zoom to talk about
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don't bother me. I can't cope because I was directing that production
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And I wanted the young people to research that work by making
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Mickey Grant and Bennett Carroll so that they could do a pre-show presentation for the audience that helped them to know who these pioneers in theater were
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That Mickey Grant was the first black woman to have a show on Broadway in 1972
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That Vanette Carroll was the first black woman to direct a Broadway show
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And so Charlene was so generous. And we just sat and talked about what it was like to be in the urban arts players back then and the touring companies
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the different people and she's naming names and Sicily and da-da. And I'm like, are you talking about
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Sicily Tyson? Like, and so, you know what I mean? And so, yes, it's that sense of, you know
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John Vili started me out and then introduced me to someone that he was mentoring. And she speaks so
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highly of him as well. And then because she was mentored by him, she mentored me and gave what she
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could to me and the times that we spent together. And I remember her pulling me aside and pointing out
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to me what she thought I did really well in the show. And I thought to myself, I'm a sprite
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I'm a glorified stage hands. I'm fluttering in and pulling curtains. And so she's like, but you are
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taking the stage in a way that you're giving so much gravitas to your sprightness. And I love that she
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spoke life to me. And I love doing that with my students
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I love Liz Lerman's critical response process. She's also a friend and a mentor
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And the thing I love about that four-step process is starting with what is meaningful
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what is memorable about the work, not what do you need to change, what do you need to fix
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what do you need to tighten up, and just turning upside down how we communicate to ourselves
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and to our students, the work that they're doing, the way we ask questions
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what are you trying to communicate? What are you trying to get across
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And then if the student can tell me something, then I'm like, oh, that's your goal
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Let me help you get there as opposed to, this is how it's done
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This is how you need to do it because this is how they do it in New York or bup, blah, blah, but I had to shed a lot of that
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And I feel like that's been a process. Each mentor has given me a gift
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of a different perspective that I just put in my toolbox and take with me
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And hopefully I'm able to share those gifts with the students that I interact with
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Yeah. Talk about the importance of arts education because, you know, it's been cut back in our country
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which is the saddest thing in the world. And, you know, there's people like you
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that just do it every day out of the love that you continue to be like, no
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arts education is so important. Talk about the importance of arts education. So our last camp this year
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was for third through fifth graders. And it was our original Amt Camp
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And it was simply a creative space. Every day there was a table full of things to draw
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to put together, to glue together, to make. And we gave no prompts
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It just sat there. And they would come to the table and just start making
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Sometimes I'd talk about what happened the day before or what they're going to do
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But it was just this little maker space. And then we would go from there to a physical warm-up and sort of a check-in with each other
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And we do Broadway dance And then we have a songwriter come in and teach us vocal and how our body is an instrument and how to write a song how to unpack the structure of a song like to listen to songs differently because you know how they made and what a verse and a bridge is and the difference between the two And then we would learn about theater terminology and language and about ways of communication nonverbal communication
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body language, how to understand communication and then adjust when you feel something from someone
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and then after lunch we would do 30 minutes of breath and yoga
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And then later in the day, we would start to creative writing and then build our own pieces
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And when I tell you, we went through that entire camp. And at the end, I sat one day and I said, do those children have phones
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Because I never saw one. Which is literally a miracle in today's age
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like no one ever pulled out their phones. Because they were so, I was like, what it must be like to spend a whole day being creative in so many different ways
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Their parents were like, they are so happy. They are so joy filled
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And they tell us all about all the different things that they explore and create
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And it's just so necessary. And it's so natural. When you're a little kid, music comes on, guess what you do
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You wiggle. If someone has coloring or something, guess what did you
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You pick it up, you draw. It is so innate. So to cut it off from ourselves based on whatever sort of box we're trying to put everybody in is like to cut off a part of who you are
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And it keeps us from being whole. And we see the result of folks walking around stunted and not whole because they're not engaged
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creatively. And it's why I also believe not only is arts education so important to allow it to flourish
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throughout someone's life, whether they're three, 13, 23, 35, 85, every age and stage of life
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needs creativity to thrive, to express. There's just some things you cannot say in a conversation
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but you can say in a song. There's just some things you cannot express that are
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troubling you that you can write out and have be as my friend Andre McCrae says you can have pain
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life is challenging but don't waste it as an artist we get to use it we get to express it we get
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to share it we get to connect it to other human beings to to tap into our humanity right and so when
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we lose art when we lose the opportunity for educators to introduce art
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to people, to reintroduce art to folks who've forgotten it and need to come back to it
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We lose a sense of humanity. We lose a sense of wholeness and it is not healthy, right
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We've got to be about helping ourselves to be whole, helping ourselves to be strong
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helping ourselves to be well-rounded. And the arts help to do that in so many ways that I can't even express
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how valuable and invaluable it is. It also makes people feel. When you're on a phone, you can't feel
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If you're playing a video game, you can't feel. You know, and it's that human connection
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And I think arts education, even if someone doesn't want to become an actor or an actress
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you know, they may want to go work behind the scenes, but it also just prepares them for life to have a conversation
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to go to a job interview, to, you know, interact with an actual human being, not a cell phone
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And I think even if they don't go into the arts, It just sets them up for life
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Yes. And that's one of the things that I share with my young people all the time
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Our programs aren't here to make you a performer. To make this be your career pursuit
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They're to give you the skills and the tools that performers have. We are some of the best problem solvers in the world because, honey, this fell down
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The light's not working, da-da-da, but the show must go on. We're going to figure it out
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We are some of the best collaborators, you know, the amount of teamwork
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and just making it happen, getting it done. We are some of the best cheerleaders for that understudy who went on and
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who I'm rooting for you, right? So all of those communicators, communication styles that are different
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There's a different communication style in and listening to, you know, part of acting is just listening
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And then there's that communication style of the person working behind the scenes that's concise
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because they're on a headset, five words or lefts. I don't need a whole exposition. right? And so learning to flip back and forth between that, I tell my young people, all of these
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you are going to be ahead of the game and have so many tools that you can use in any setting
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whether you are working in a job or your own entrepreneur, you can use these skills
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Finally, what gives you the most satisfaction each day with teaching the arts
28:01
Hmm. I think for me, it's the one-on-one quiet moment. There's times where I'll get, you know, I get the Miss CJ text
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Ms. CJ, can I get your advice about such and such? Ms. CJ, I have an audition
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I was wondering if I was like, Ms. CJ, I got a contract and I don't know how to read it
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Ms. CJ or Ms. CJ, so my students always, Miss CJ, I don't know what to do with this check, with this money I got
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So we'll just have lunch or, you know, tea. or something. And I've had a bunch of those, especially a couple that are getting ready to go to
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college. They're like, can we have tea? Can we have lunch? And just to sit and talk and listen
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and to tell my own stories, to tell how far I was. I mean, when I was 17, Broadway was way over
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there. And it was a chasm between me and it as far as knowledge and understanding. And I wish I had
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someone to answer a few questions to talk about, oh, I can see where you would think that
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Here's a couple things to consider. Not to tell me what to do, but just open up the amount of information that I can put into
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my decision making as a young adult on this path. I love those one-on-ones
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I love it. They look for you for that. They look for you like Ms. CJ can just, if she can do it, I can do it
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And they watch the way you've dealt with life and all the people you've helped
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which I think it's wonderful. Once again, submissions are now being accepted
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for the 2025 Excellence in the Theater Education Award. So please just click the link above to submit your teacher today
29:49
CJ, thank you, but drop me to chat with me. This has been great. I've seen you in the shows you've done
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And I just love that you've given back. And like you said, you turn the lights up and turn the lights on
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to all these people to let their light shine. and that's an important thing we need in the world today
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And thank you for doing what you do. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much
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This has been lovely to talk with you. I appreciate having this time. Everybody, we'll see you at the theater
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And just remember the importance of teachers of what they've given to you
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and what they give to our future and the importance of arts education
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Take care, everybody. We'll see you soon. Take care
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