Culture is Infrastructure and People: A Conversation with Raelle Myrick-Hodges

In cities like New Orleans, culture isn’t a luxury—it’s infrastructure and people. Sustaining that infrastructure and retaining the people requires more than creativity. Culture demands leadership, financial discipline, and a willingness to confront hard truths about institutions, communities, and ourselves.

In this episode, Raelle Myrick-Hodges, Executive Director of the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans (CACNO), engages in a candid and deeply personal conversation about the realities of leading a cultural institution. She shares her unconventional path from a self-taught artist navigating neurodiversity to founding Azuka Theatre and ultimately stepping into leadership at one of our most prominent arts institutions. Raelle offers a frank look at the pressures facing organizations like the CACNO, from financial constraints and staffing challenges to the lingering weight of institutional history and public perception.

Raelle leads beyond the CACNO to explore broader questions: What do arts institutions owe their communities? Why are artists often undervalued as leaders? And how can cities like New Orleans better harness their cultural capital as both an economic engine and a source of civic identity?

Throughout, Raelle challenges assumptions—about passion, leadership, and even what it means to be an artist—while emphasizing a central idea: artists are not simply entertainers; they are problem-solvers, builders, and essential contributors to how society functions.

This conversation is about people, institutions, and a city that continues to define itself through creativity, risk, and reinvention.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

The institutions that support artists shape not only creative expression, but the civic and economic life of the community. These cultural institutions often look effortless from the outside. Beautiful exhibitions, vibrant performances, a steady flow of creative work. But behind the scenes, they require constant leadership, financial discipline, and community trust. And in cities like New Orleans, where resources are limited, culture is not a luxury. It's infrastructure and its people. Welcome to Brennan Law's Lanyard, where we provide a little extra perspective through conversations with individuals from across the spectrum of society. I'm Maurice Brungart, your host. I enjoy engaging with experienced, knowledgeable, and passionate people for the opportunity to forge and enrich our understanding of the world through their eyes. The more we learn, the more likely we can become better versions of ourselves and guide others towards the same. Today's guest is Rael Myrick Hodges, Executive Director of the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. She was born in North Carolina and raised in our nation's capital. She has worked as a stage director for over 25 years and producer, curator for more than 10. She is the founder of Azuka Theater in Philadelphia and was also an educator at Pace University. Welcome to the program, Ralph.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

It's a privilege and again, grateful that you're giving me this opportunity to talk to you. Well, what brought you to New Orleans?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Uh initially, who doesn't want to come to New Orleans? Is the first question? I like to hear you ask. I've never met a person who said, Oh, New Orleans, that's not a place I want to go. When I initially came here, I uh I am self-taught so and self-initiated as an artist. So I happened to run into someone who has mentored many artists here in the city, MK Wegman, who's probably on every board at every institute in the city. And that became an impetus to come down here and then meeting other artists down here long term. Eventually, um in the mid-aughts, I was part of the staff here at the CAC. And so, yeah, that's what brought me to New Orleans.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Well, let's kick it back a few years and you know, where you started off. Tell us about your background.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Well, I am really happy that technically I'm a Southern girl, and yet really sad that I'm not a New Orleanian. Um, I was raised in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. My family, my mom's side of the family are all farm folks. My dad's side of the family are all folks from the Bronx and Jersey. So they made a DC baby, I guess, technically. Um, I went to public school. I am on I have I am on the spectrum. I have um a couple of compulsions. The irony is, is we didn't know that until like 2021. And so this idea that like college was far more difficult for me than I had anticipated, mostly it had to do with tonality and rhythm and being a woman of color and how we make assumptions about women of color, and you can't really do that with people when they're on the spectrum, and it makes life harder. And so I pretty much just started my own theater company. That's why I'm a theater artist.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Interesting. Yeah. Well, speaking of uh, you know, being on the spectrum, I guess. Um, did you have difficulty in high school? I mean, and I always had difficulty.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

I was really curious about things. I always I wanted a very simple life, but I it was always around art. Since I was in second and third grade, my mother, my parents never married until very recently. They got married in 2022.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

You're shitting me.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

No, and they didn't date until 2021. Ever. Okay. Oh, I made a play about it. Yeah, it's great too. It's an excellent play. Okay. We're not joking.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

All right. We're gonna have to take a two-minute little side trip here. Give us a little bit about that. This is unique.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

This is what I love about being an artist, and where we get to share bits and pieces of ourselves, and why sometimes they get a little frustrated when we want to spend so much time telling people how they should be acting rather than sharing parts of ourselves that allow people to change. My parents were young when my mom got pregnant, and my dad was in the military, and my mom wanted to leave North Carolina, and my mom is still a super independent person. I mean, they're married, but like anybody who's met my parents are like, so Barbara's in charge, is what I know. Um, but Ray thinks he's in charge. Okay, and they love each other. Um, I never had an issue growing up in terms of understanding that my parents weren't together, and yet um I was shocked at how like other people had these issues in their family. When COVID hit, my dad went to check on my mom, and then I get a phone call how they're getting married.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

So they so they weren't originally together when you were born? Mm-mm. Okay. No. So they recently got back together.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

I mean Yeah, I mean, my father, both of my parents were great parents, so let's be clear, they've always been in each other's lives, but not romantically. Huh. My parents are very like staunchly, annoyingly decent human beings. My father has been married in the past. My mother doesn't cheat with a married man.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

So no, they weren't dating. Huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

And I look like my dad and I sound like my mom. Oh, yeah. And a personality of both. And a personality of both. Absolutely. And and I did make a play, and it was called Um He Has the Prettiest Handwriting, because my father has gorgeous handwriting. Huh. And I asked him, I asked him five questions, and he wrote me five letters to answer the questions, and it was about me and my mom and our family, and then I made a little piece about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Okay. Yeah. Now, from a formal point of view, formal education, uh, when did that occur in terms of developing your artistic interests?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I went to the University of Southern California, but did not was not able to complete, although I do have a cap and gown picture. Um, I then went to England, then went abroad, then uh became very curious around different avenues to make art, but I had grown up uh in narrative text-based work. If someone had told me about George Coates or told me about the visual artists like Pope L, if if I had known about that coming up, I may not have gone into what we consider theater. This idea of Broadway in and of itself is not the most magical thing for me as an audience person or artist, but it was what was available when I was coming up, and I think I was pretty good at it as a director. I was never interested in acting. I've I've acted very seldom in my life and very curious about that acting time. Um, and that's yeah, that's kind of it. Sorry, got a little distracted over there. No problem.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Uh what what are some of the countries you went to?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

So I studied in London, uh, I've done residencies in Paris. Uh I traveled with Brava, Hethopotel, we went to Egypt, uh, we went to um Lebanon. Uh I have worked in Canada. I've worked in Vancouver, Montreal. Um we did a residency in Mexico that I worked with when I got to work with uh my friend Caleb, who works a lot with um uh Emery Douglas, who was part of the Black Panthers. Um, that's when I learned about veganism. I didn't know that black people were vegans till I met Emery. Um and I use art as a way to learn, and I think that maybe that's where we had a difficulty understanding that I was autistic because you move so much in the arts, you have no choice but to communicate, and because there are so many idiosyncratic spirits, it's easy to be overlooked. Also, being a person of color usually means we are uh aggressively suppressed in to boxes. So where one other person from a more privileged family may be able to act out in a certain way, that was not an option for for me, right? There wasn't an acting really crazy in the grocery store. I did one cartwheel once and got the worst spanking of my life, you know, that kind of thing. So we are constantly in a punitive state as people of color who are on the spectrum. And I think that because of that, I probably modified my whole life. And then the blessing of being in the arts, everyone's weird, quote unquote. So no one would necessarily think an outburst or being moody was a comment on something else. It was just a state for that moment because we get to actually express ourselves in the arts differently than I think the average bear does in their jobs.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

You've kind of left me uh deep in thought. Sorry. No, no apologies necessary. Um one, I think, you know, you you mentioned artists and uh idiosyncratic behaviors, and there's maybe artists as a collective uh body have perhaps more people on the spectrum, right? Uh but by the same token, having worked in government for over two decades, uh and seeing so many people uh acting in such a suppressed way, who knows how many are on the spectrum in other areas of life. And you know, it is what it is, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Um and as uh my psychiatrist initially discussed, is she was very clear, we're all on the spectrum. It's just the majority of folks fall into the same spots. Yes, it isn't that we're not all in that boat, it's just some of us are in different sections of the ship.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yes, and over time I've even wondered you know, do I have ADHD or something?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Most likely you do, particularly with the stimuli we live with these days.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yes, yeah. Um, so here at the Contemporary Arts Center, uh, describe for our audience what's the difference from a contemporary art center compared to like a museum or what have you.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

That's a really good question, and I think it's something that people keep uh getting confused about. The joke that I make here is that, well, when you're an art center, we can do whatever we want. And the reason is because as a museum, we don't collect, we're not NOMA, for example, we don't have um storage, we don't have a collection of artists that we can take in, and we're not a gallery because we don't sell art. Um, we're also not a teaching center because we're not uh registered teachers in the field. So having an education program or having a presenting program and performance or art like that, that's what frees us. Because we don't hold art, we are able to celebrate poetry, film, dance, music, theater, you know, multidisciplinary. The art center gets to be exactly that a place to become uh a journey and learning for all ages and not just an assumptive space of what is already important.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Tell us about your first experience actually directing.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Well, my teddy bears are like in like professional life, because my first directing job was when I was because I was a latchkey kid, which a lot of folks may not know what that means. That means that your mama is not paying somebody to come and take care of you after school, and you would have to go straight home after school with a key around your neck, and it's how people, it was actually dangerous when you think about it. People would know you were by yourself and they could follow you home. But like, I was also like a very aggressive kid. But I, my friend Jennifer Hatcher, my friend Trina Brown, and John Bell. Wow, those names haven't come to my head in 30 years. We would put on shows together to the Isley Brother albums.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

And my mother would come home, and that was my first producing gig, which was me asking for 20 cents and realizing I should have asked for 25 because who has nickels? And that was my first gig. Okay. Um, my first professional directing gig was a like from my experience. I had directed bits and pieces before and had the blessing of starting a theater company um in Philadelphia, but it was really being at the Arden Theater Company in Philadelphia and being um raised by, I call it raised as an artist, raised by Amy and Terry Nolan, who run the Arden Theater in their apprentice program. Um they really supported me starting my own theater company. So the first time I started my company was the first time I directed. And that was a play that I wrote myself because we didn't have enough money to get the rights to a published work, and then I didn't even know you had to get money for an adaptation. So we had adapted James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, and I called it La Rudeful Street of Mistakes. And we performed it, and we got a cease and desist letter like you get from the estate, but then by the time we got it, we had like one more performance, and they were like, okay, you can say that one more performance, but then never again. Um, and that's kind of how they roll, is they're really interested in people that are able to do those things, but that was back in 1992.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Different times, different places. Different times. Uh but one can still pull those uh types of activities off even today. Um looking back, and your formal university education, what comments would you share? And I bring this up for the following reason. Uh my son is the youngest of our three, and uh assume he's gonna be off to college, and you know, he's expressed interest in art. Uh and where is the the line? Some people make the argument, well, art isn't something you can really learn in school, right? And then others uh will say, well, you know, what can you do with an art degree, so to say, whatever that may be. And what would you say to budding artists out there in terms of if this is something they want to pursue, you know, what guidance would you give them? And then number two, you know, the balance between the formal education and the informal experience.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Great question. First, I'm gonna start with um a wood, a wood piece that was made in North Carolina that I have in my house, and it says, all of us are creative, but artists make choices. And that's what being an artist is. An artist has to be someone who's not afraid to make mistakes. An artist has to be someone who is willing to hear people talk behind their backs and be willing to be confused about their art. That's the strong, ugly that that adult part of being an artist. What I find interesting about like what it takes to be an artist is people will say, Oh, you don't need to go to school for that. I should have had the opportunity to get a job like this almost 15 years ago, but because I didn't come up through a Yale or a Juilliard or a San Diego or even a like uh SF State or uh uh University of Florida, their dance programs in Florida are incredible. Or um Texas AM, there was no, I didn't have people that were of like mind. So when I started my theater company, it was me and my like six friends, right, in this program that I had um applied to at the Arden Theater Company, but I didn't have a graduate background in like how to connect into New York theater or how to even tolerate New York theater for that matter, right? So that was the biggest struggle. Um being 10-15 years into the field is where you start to catch up with a lot of those folks, and the irony is very there are many folks who go to university who aren't talented, and there are many who don't that are, and it starts to balance out because the attrition of passion and ambition and vision and focus and desire and love for what you want to do becomes so clear once you hit a certain age, you're either gonna do it the rest of your life or you're not. You think you think I want to be at a nonprofit my whole life? It just a compulsion. I have no choice. I love what I do. All I've ever wanted to do was make art, walk to work, and make sure I made my parents proud. And everything else is cream.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

I like that. Like that. And for the benefit of our audience, you know, she's smiling ear to ear as she's talking and you know, shesturing with her hands. You can really tell she loves this. Um define for us success for a contemporary arts institution today.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I think, well, apparently staying open. I I think we've been really cavalier in the United States about the assumption of what is important when it comes to having arts institutions, whether they're visual, performing arts, dance, music, even film suffers now, right? After COVID. And staying open is a really important part of that process. Sometimes I think maybe more um it gets taken more seriously than what you should be doing in the mission. Um, but the way to stay open is to program, and the way to stay open is to be communicative and to be clear with values and mission.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Before we jump into sort of your institutional stewardship, um how do you see a higher education here in the city of New Orleans? You have Loyola University, they have the College of Music, there's Tulane University, UNO, Southern University of New Orleans, uh Dillard, Xavier. Uh from what you've been able to observe during uh your your time here, um what would you comment about their arts programs and what recommendations would you make if anyone from those institutions were listening?

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Well, if you get the blessing to study under Ron Bachet at Xavier University, you should do so. Um many of the people on this staff that I learn from in this short period of time in this position, respect, um appreciate, hope to be friends with, come out of that visual art program. I believe that Tulane uh is also a really interesting place when it comes to movement and dance. Uh I think that Dillard has a lot to offer in terms of art administration, a lot along with UNO. I think the com the hard part is a lot of times you don't visual art is one of the few spaces where the teachers are practicing their field. If so it's harder for, I mean, from from my experience when I was coming up, like a lot of our master teachers when I was in university, which was partially why I wasn't good at it, is they were telling me what to do, but they hadn't directed a play for like a decade. So that's a harder conversation, and we made being a teacher, and I don't mean, oh, those that do teach, that's stupid. Everyone in my family is a teacher, and they're all great, great artisans at what they do specifically. What I'm saying is a great teacher pursues what they teach.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

That's all I'm saying. And I think it's easy in the arts field because of how the country shapes this assumption that art is equated to entertainment, right? And when you make those that equal, you turn it into anybody can do that. The amount of people that think they can act that cannot act is amazing. For real, for real. Like, just watch the internet. And I'm this is the thing. My friends say this all the time. They're like, don't see a show with her unless you wanna. If because I'm an African-American woman from North Carolina. I call and response is actually part historically of our art culture. It's in my social DNA. So if you're on stage and you're corny, being corny, and then you say something corny, you might hear my low, crunchy, Rael mouth say something annoying. I've literally had friends be like, I'm no longer going to the theater with you. And I've had other friends go, I never want to go to the theater unless I go with you, because that was amazing. Um, and so I think it's a little subjective there. Okay. Um tell us about Azuka. Azuka was born uh in a coffee shop in an alley right next to the Art and Theater Company. There are there are five people in my life that I trust with my life. Give us a location for. We're in Philadelphia, it is still running, it has its own space now. Um, it has two artistic directors now, with um one of the founders being the producer. And if it weren't for Mark, McKenna, Nora, Maya, and Kevin, I'm not sure I'd make art. Um, and all of us have thrived in our field uh because we had that as a space. It was the first time, aside from my own family that looks like me, uh, where I felt like people who didn't look like me were supportive of my vision. And that's what Azuka is. I went to five of my friends who are of Western European descent in Philly, where we were all in this internship program together, and I was like, You guys, I want to start a theater company. And they were like, You're great. No, they were like, Yeah, let's do it. And we would wake up and meet in a coffee shop before our internship started at 8:30. And my favorite photo of all time is of my friend McKenna and how hostile she looks in the morning. Um, and they would sit with me and we would make our plans and we would consider what show we would do, and then I got plucked by the public theater to work as, you know, an assistant for George C. Woolf for a couple of seasons, and then Mark and Kevin took over. So I I get my confidence from the fact that not from starting that organization, but from the people that started that organization with me, believing that I was exactly what I thought I was before I thought I was. They believed I was talented, they believed I was a good producer, they believed I had vision, and I all I just wanted to try to make plays. I thought I did, but I didn't have any formalized training, and I hadn't finished college, so I didn't feel adequate, I didn't feel smart, I felt um passion, but I wasn't sure if I knew what I was doing. And they were like, Yeah, you know what you're doing, let's do this, let's do it together. We can do it together. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

On that note, the word passion. So sometimes we hear a lot, you know, find your passion, right? Do your passion. Um, but would you actually give that guidance to anyone about because the danger about following the passion is you know, once you start putting in the blood, sweat, and tears, then sometimes the passion goes out. Uh and sometimes passion is actually discovered through the blood and sweat and tears, right? There's that danger. Well, if if if I'm not happy today, maybe this is not what I should be doing, and then move on to the next thing, right? It's that it's that odd of balance. And you know, the I think the intent is noble communicating to folks that follow your dreams, your passion, or whatnot. But the pitfall out there, and I'll turn it over to you, is when people conflate that with it's gonna be easy.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Well, that's the thing. People think that passion is a feeling when passion is a fact.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

You either want this thing, like, and when I say want, I'm not even talking ambition. Since I was five years old, I was making skits and showing them to my aunt Paquita and my aunt Mildred and my uncle Rob, rest his soul, and my mom and my dad and my cousin Charlotte in this family that had no sense of what that was supposed to be like, and they just were like, Well, that's who she is. So passion is who you are. Many of us are passionate about being negative. Many of us are passionate about being gossips, like, right? Yeah, like very few people are passionate about their jobs, and we get this energy around people that get to participate in the arts as if, like, well, you're lucky you get to even do that. You should be happy if someone even paid you for it. Y'all are paying young girls thousands of dollars a minute for OnlyFans. Don't tell me I don't deserve at least$25 an hour. Exactly. So I just I feel like passion's a fact. This is I am compelled to do what I do. I have tried. You could ask my friend. I've been like, I'm quitting, never to return. I want to go to commercial, corporate, make some money, meet cool people, be at fancy dinners, act like I don't care about the world, whatever, advocate for no one but myself. It doesn't work. Because the fact is, I am an artist, period, dead stop, have been since I was five, will die one, will either die rich one or die a poor one, but we'll be dying as one. One way or another, we're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

One way or another, my friends. In terms of artists, and you mentioned being viewed strictly as entertainment, and I actually had this brief uh conversation with it with a guest the other day, and do you see again there's this stereotype to treat artists as, yes, a source of entertainment, even if it's intellectual, deep entertainment, but still not seeing an artist, whatever style they are, visual, dance, whatever music, uh, but failing to place them on equal footing with the lawyer, the doctor, the engineer, and actually looking at an artist as yeah, this is this is someone who could also be a leader.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

That's a good point. Um it's it you said something earlier about education, and I think this ties into what you just asked. If you hire an artist for a job, you are a smart person. Artists spend their time troubleshooting. If you work in the theater, all you do is work with people that have issues and complaint and insecurities and beauty and mania. And if you are a stage manager in the American theater, you can run IBM. I swear to you. Guaranteed. You can run any film company because you are dealing with things that many, many people don't understand, from people's personal issues all the way up to the checks that they're getting, who they're talking to. Why do you even think we know about any of the abuse in our fields, right? If you are working with someone who's a musician, you are dealing with someone who knows how to focus on like getting something done, who knows how to zone out the rest of the world to get this one thing done. Because you can't you can't play an instrument and worry about your lover at the same time on stage. It doesn't work that way. If you're working with someone who's made films, who's a filmmaker, they know how to be disconcertingly meticulous, almost annoying, because every single shot and what is in that shot is an interpretation of someone. That's if these are good artists, right? And it's the same for a poet, same for a painter. Like, so there's something that comes out of those artistries that lends itself to making the rest of the world work. What's interesting is I've never had to hire a lawyer. I always have to buy an outfit. Who you think that's designed by? Not a lawyer. Lawyers aren't pressing your albums. It's not even lawyers that are making code. Those are artists, those are creatives, those are, those are usually a lot of people who wish they were artists in the traditional sense, who were able to find passion, vision, and focus to create something new. That's what I think. Like, I'm sure Mr. Zuckerberg would have loved to be an actor.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

He just has an actor-y vibe to me.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Well, we all know he would have been a great substitute for data on Star Trek Enterprise.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Uh, you know, with all due respect, Mr. Zuckerberg.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

I think he's adorably crazy and interesting. And without him, you know, I wouldn't be able to like celebrate the people in my life regularly. So good to him.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

In terms of the organizations that you founded uh and the arts institutions. Only one.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

I only founded one, but I've worked at many.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Okay. Uh, my mistake there, thank you. Um, what are some of the lessons you learned from there that you've brought here to the Contemporary Arts Center?

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Now that I've been diagnosed, to be completely honest, um sometimes this is a very recent lesson that I've learned. It is easy to forget you're the one in power. So when you're arguing with a freelance artist, you are the bully, no matter what. No matter what. And it's easy for me to forget that because I'm also a woman and I'm also a person of color, and so sometimes I can feel bullied. But when you are the leader, when you head the organization, those conversations, this may be their only time or their first of few times where they've talked with you, don't know the trauma that a leader of the arts can give to an artist. Obviously, there's a huge history even here at the CAC, whether it be gossip or fact, of how much harm the CAC has done to all these artists. And I sound facetious only because I am an artist and I know how melodramatic we can be, because if it were that bad, knowing artists, we would have burned this place down if it were like that, which meant there was hope that it wasn't that, that there was a space of growing out of that, and the irony of that being that many times this happening when the place wasn't run by an artist.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Contemporary Art Center, institutional challenges, share with us.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Everybody's broke, we're probably more broke. Uh, the biggest challenge here specifically is the the perception of who the contemporary arts center is. When I first got here, which we discussed, people would make jokes and walk up to me and say, Oh yeah, the Caucasian Arts Center. And now they walk up to me, and that was 15 years ago, and now it's a completely opposite hue of staff, and people still say that, which means you haven't been here in 15 years, and and then I'm supposed to take you serious. So the problem is, is I can't take you serious when you're uninformed. So a lot of the problems institutionally are our own active space of disinformation and making clarity for ourselves, not just of history, but owning history, I think is an institutional challenge. I think there's a lot of folks in the city who are super connected to the CAC and feel uh really personal when people have problems with an institution. But all practicing artists in theater, I don't, I never met an actor who didn't have to take notes. I'm a director, every producer I've ever had gave me critiques, criticisms, things to change. I don't like this, you need to be doing this. And some situations it didn't, it doesn't work out well, in most situations it works great. So I feel like the the real issue of challenges is programming, being consistent, and allowing the CAC to change. The city has to allow the CAC to change. Every time it's gotten a new my predecessors, the last two weren't artists, they weren't making art, right? So rules were you couldn't make art here if you were an artist. So most of the people coming here to work were also artists. This is the only city I've ever lived in where I know more men that know how to sew than costume designers in New York because of the parade culture here. Because it's part of what this city is about, right? The the food, the parades, that this, the being able to make is normal here. Being an artist here is nothing here. What I mean is like being in service to artists is the job, and it gets lost sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Briefly, what do you mean by being an artist here is nothing?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

When I say nothing, I mean the opposite. It's everything. It's like being in um, you go to some countries and everybody knows how to sing, everybody knows how to dance. Like uh, I know the the largest majority of people I know in the United States that I would trust as non-artists to try to be artists would be from this city than other cities because of the culture here, because of parades, because of there's such an extensive music, because it's normal to just dance whatever. No one's gonna think it's weird if you're like just dancing on the street here, right? They still think it's weird in many parts of this country. So that's what I meant by that. I meant it's everything. I mean it's innate, it's a it's it's more of the social DNA of the average New Orleanian to be an artist than to even be creative. Y'all make choices real fast. Y'all will sit and be like, my headband's looking like this, it's for this parade on this day at this time. Those are choices, and to be able to do that so fluidly, so effortlessly for six weeks out of the year, and then claim that you're not an artist is kind of interesting, right? And I think that that's where the CAC, that space in between, becomes difficult because the CAC, our biggest challenge is to be here to complement and not compete. And I think people think we're here to compete with Antenna or compete with NOMA or compete with Arthur Roger. We one, we can't. They're fantastic, and I go there. I'm not, I want to be in those spaces and see the work they're presenting. I do feel like one of the CAC's biggest challenges is how do we make the artists here understand that they are international artists, that they have a platform that they have to actually resonate with that has less to do with an assumption of whether you're here within these walls or not.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

What are some misconceptions you've picked up on that people have about running a cultural institution like the CAC?

SPEAKER_01 39:56

That the executive director has as much power as you think they do. We spend a lot of our time just trying to keep the building open. I told you this um before we started taping. Before we even get to payroll, we have to pay out anywhere from$30,000 to$45,000 a month. That's before we get paid. So when people come to us and say, Oh, I have this little project, I want to do it here for free. I can't believe you won't do it for free. It's not free to have someone sit at the front desk. It's not free to have a house manager. Seldom are we actually making, it's a nonprofit. We don't make money. It's actually not really the point of the center, but it takes money to even be open. For you to be physically safe in here, we gotta pay that$17,000 a month in building insurance, otherwise, we can't be open.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

As we explore the operational logistical side here, uh tell us about the size of your full-time staff and even part-time staff. So the audience has the ability to imagine this.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

The entirety of our staff is only about 14 or 15. We have about four, six, six full-time people. Um we have, and uh many of them like uh started here as the assistants and associates to many of the people that quit the organization. So many of them learned on the job in the past three years because they had to pick up the slack, they had to pick up the baton, they had to keep running the marathon, they started to learn how to utilize their own uh resources, artists, contacts, being from here, how that works, and the that's that's when you realize there's so much beauty within the arts here, because you can food is art here justifiably. We can do that at the art center. Like we could do a whole food thing that's not fancy art photographs, we could just do food, and that would that's amazing. Um, and so that's kind of the biggest misconception how much it costs to run this place and the assumption of what people make here. Because I don't make what other people in this position have made, and I need that to be very, very clear. And I think that people need to understand very few women are given a healthy institution when they begin.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

I'm gonna go out on a limb here. What do you see as the CAC's greatest strength and greatest weakness?

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Our greatest strength is our current staff that stuck around to keep these doors open the past three seasons when so many other people bailed. And I mean that respectfully. Yes. But the truth is that Daquan Forcell, who is now the director of exhibitions, that is to me one of the most inspiring stories in the arts that I've ever seen. This dude started at the front desk, graduating from Xavier, proactively sending his own cover letter and resume after school, and sat at the front desk and then moved up to the manager of the front of house, and then moved into preparations, and he's been here eight years, and now he's the head of exhibitions. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like the fact that our patron services manager is a poet when he's not here. Um, our greatest strength is the people that are on staff now, and hopefully, who we layer this staff with as we get healthier. I don't look at it as a recovery, I look at it as a um a rebirth. Why do you think they stay? Because I think true, I think because. Okay, this is gonna be really hard. Most of the people that left aren't artists. Okay. Facts. Almost all of them are. And they're like, well, someone's gotta keep it open. So at the end of the day, the soldier and the artist are actually equal. We can always do without a lawyer. Right? So that's where we are, you know? The doctor and the artist are equal in trying to heal things. Yes. You know? The public speaker and the artist in terms of advocacy. So those, that's why they stayed. They stayed because literally every single person who stayed is an artist.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

And greatest weakness?

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Our greatest weakness is the history, the rumor meal, the assumptions of things that many of the people that are here now don't even know that much about, to be honest. And you know, it's hard to beat rumor. And it's it's hard to have it be that a person can decide one day. I can walk outside tomorrow and say, this happened at the CAC. No one's gonna call me, but they will continue to tell that same rumor. Except I'm a Scorpio, so you don't want to be telling rumors about me. You will be sad. To be clear. Ask my friends, ask about me, because you'll be sad, because I will correct it.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

My mom's a Scorpio.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

So you know, yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

How do leaders in this industry, in this environment, balance ambition uh with fiscal responsibility?

SPEAKER_01 45:39

It's interesting you say that because I don't understand the I think a little bit of it is not understanding the question. I am definitely um managing the challenge of economics I did not create. A deficit I may not have created. However, I would like people to I would like more nonprofits to be as transparent as the CAC has had to be, because I have not worked at one nonprofit in my life that wasn't deeply struggling, doing hand to mouth every time. And that includes the ones that have million-dollar like budgets, like five plus to five hundred thousand to fifty thousand. Everyone is having the same economic problem because the the country we live in doesn't have an affinity, appreciation for the arts that the way they do in other parts of the world. We didn't cultivate it in the same way. Back in 1980, you couldn't start first grade without taking violin. When was the last time you heard a bunch of annoying violin sounds? We took music out of school, out of public school. We have been deconstructing, making it impossible for the masses to have an appreciation and a love and an understanding that it is an imperative part of their social fabric. So yeah, I just get frustrated.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Well, do you think part of the problem, and and I kind of raised this before about the equal footing of art as a concept? I mean, you have biology class, you have calculus, you have physics, you've got uh Western civilization. Right, but up until 1985 or 1990.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Right, but we thought that those were all equal up until a certain time period. Something happened where we decided to try to commodify and create this idea of thinking outside the box, which is really what artists do, should be commodified into a smaller box of just entertainment, of just innocuous ideas. Everyone acts like Instagram started as an advocacy thing, it was made for photographers. We weren't even supposed to put words on Instagram, we ruined that for the phot like you know, photographers are like, that was supposed to be our format. That's how I knew it to be, and then one day it just wasn't because it made more money as something else. So part of it is our duty here at the CAC isn't to be smug. I think also American arts institutions, we have this elite smug thing, and I hate to shock everybody. Shakespeare is actually really easy if it's done well. You understand it really well when the people can act. I'm just throwing that out there. When everybody can act, you understand the story. Um, it's the same as any other horror film you've ever watched, okay? Because that fellow is like a mystery horror to me. Um, and I think that's part of where the spectrum stuff came in. I would read a play and then see it and be like, I thought it was a totally different thing. And that to me is the beauty of art. This intellectualization of visual art that's become this weird elitist thing, and like, oh, art, art, art. I mean, I get it, but like it's why no one likes to go to art centers. It's why no one wants to go, no one wants to go. Hey, can you give us$20 so we can make it feel dumb? Like, nobody wants that. Nobody wants to feel like they're not getting to participate, even if the participation is to listen or to see.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

Speaking of just very briefly about social media, you mentioned Instagram and what the original apparent objective was.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Um from my opinion, because I know we get in trouble for that now.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

So, two things here um the integration of social media and artificial intelligence in the arts world. What what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 50:13

Well, here's the key AI doesn't really mess with live art in the same way it will for television, film, news, commercials, everything else that is digitized because you have to actually be in the room. The reason I went into theater was because I remember my mother taking me to a play. And I remember being a little kid, and I remember feeling sad, and then watching the girl on stage cry and be like, oh my god, we're both crying at the same time. That's amazing. And what that like being in agreement with someone in an emotion, laughing, crying, wanting that person yelling at the stage, that is about communing. Live art is the art of communing, right? And maybe, maybe you know, film is the art of spectacle, but that's not the same thing. You can get spectacle on YouTube, you can't get like what happened yesterday at the orchestra to happen remotely the same today, it just won't. We don't even like breathe the same way when we wake up in the morning, right?

SPEAKER_00 51:28

That's true. Uh, returning back to uh CAC, and we talked briefly about strengths, weaknesses. So let's expand a little here. CAC is in the arts district of New Orleans. Uh, you know, there are arts galleries uh surrounding the area. You have the World War II Museum nearby, which is this behemoth of territory, right? Of an organization. Um what are the strengths and weaknesses you have observed of the arts district in general?

SPEAKER_01 52:00

In in the CBD, like our little our little triptak or quarter teak corner. First of all, we're really lucky that the Ogden and World War II they've been super welcoming of me, um, willing to collaborate with us, having the ED from the Ogden come over for closings and openings since I've been here. That's a blessing to have people be like, welcome to the neighborhood. So I think the strongest part is being good neighbors to each other and trying to long-term the word collaborate is so overused, but but more like neighborly joy. Like, yo, if you're gonna do a Thursday and stay open till nine, should we do Wednesday or do you want it to happen at the same time? Right?

SPEAKER_00 52:50

Like better communication and then like coordinating Thanksgiving dinner, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:56

Yes, with cousins. The biggest challenge is audience, because the audience that may be interested in understanding the Second World War may not necessarily be interested in like the queer Mississippi kid who is working with artists from Vietnam and Burkina Faso, right? Yeah, that's my assumption, that's what I have to get over, that's what I lead as challenge so that I can break down those barriers and find the right language that isn't about hiding that, but welcomes all of us into that space for that learning at all ages. I think a lot of times the biggest challenge for us and many other arts institutions is I think we forget it's our job to make them interested, and we get so caught in wanting to administrators who are not creatives in and of themselves get so caught in like being amazed by the artist. I'm not amazed by the artist, so it's easy for me to be far more challenging, expect us to stretch more, expect us to have more respect for each other, to not make assumptions about audience, right? Yes, so that's what we're working on. We have a collaboration coming up very soon with World War II. We did an educational collaboration with them in the fall that now she's at Jean Mitchell, Gene Mitchell as a fellow, but our public programs officer at the time created, and I had so much fun that day, right? And you know this about me. I come I come from a military family, so I have a different, I probably have a different take than the average, supposed kind of presentational artist who's like, and yeah, war is wrong, and yeah. I was like, no, thank you, Civil War. Thank you, Civil War. Yes. So it's subjective, and it's um, and and being a seven-year-old visiting with your grandparents to the World War II, my I think of that kid and what I can do to have those grandparents be excited that they brought their kid here, not annoyed that they didn't bring them, and thus they must be bad grandparents, if that makes any sense. I'm really working the opposite. I think I love our field. I love being a theater artist, I love I love visual artists, I love multidisciplinary work the most. I think they're the coolest kids on the block. I just think we spent a lot of time whining, and I think we forget our own privilege, which is many of us actually coming from some semblance of privilege, whether you look at it as parents being loving to you, supporting you to go. Nobody wants to send their child to theater school, no matter how much money they have. I'm gonna tell you that right now. No matter how rich you were, your mom, your dad, your cousin, whoever, your guardian, when you said that and they said, okay, I hope you thank them for everything they put into that. Because they were worried the moment you said those words out loud. Look at your face. You know what I mean. So there's an app when my parents said, Yeah, you can go and do that after it being really hard, I think, for my dad to be like, that's not an easy thing to be. I work really hard. I'm gonna leave this interview. I'll probably be up till seven or eight, trying to get through as many emails as possible because I'm severely dyslexic and I'm on the spectrum. And I have artists write me three hours ago, and then five hours from now be writing me an email where they're cussing me out, and then they forget I'm a Scorpio and that I don't care, and then we're done. So I I'm working all the time joyously because since I was seven, all I wanted was to be able to like walk to work and present art. That's it, and eat good food, and I get all of that in New Orleans.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

Absolutely. The city, New Orleans, the Crescent City, you know, it has a global reputation and it's tied to its cultural output. So now we expand further here. Strengths and weaknesses. Um and I want to start with the weakness.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

So do you think New Orleans, whether it's at the governmental level or even among the private industry players, they are properly availing themselves and exploiting the artistic and cultural product and services that are available here in New Orleans to attract people? New Orleans depends a lot on tourism. A lot of that comes during Mardi Gras and the New Year's and Bayon Classic and whatnot. But do you think there is a strategic, overuse of the word collaboration, among all the stakeholders to draw more people here to the city to enjoy all these artistic treasures?

SPEAKER_01 58:26

I don't want to stay claim to knowing the answer to that only because I've only been back in the city for about four or five months, but what I will say is it feels like it's easy for the city as artists to feed on each other faster. And the You mean in a negative way? Like both, like simultaneously both. And what I mean by that is I you stay in New Orleans for a good year, and if you went to every like art, like if you went to one or two art pieces a week, after a certain period of months, you're running into the same group of people, yes, as audience and artists, and then you're watching that same group of people complain about how they never present. And yet the only time you're out is you're seeing the same group of people, which means you're presenting a lot. So I'm confused. Like, I personally get confused because I come from a culture of performance where people were excited to do a show in their house, right? Like, whatever the ambition or the passion, or whatever you look at, Brooklyn or this New York thing, or Chicago, or the Bay Area, or the LA scene, or even the Austin Theater scene, or the Miami Dade scene, or the Spileto Festival scene, or the Durham, North Carolina scene, or the Rhode Island scene, or right? So it goes on and on. But the reality is that here there's a lot of, yo, we need to work locally, and everybody needs to just be working together. I have never been in a space where you grow only from eating your own arm. Okay. So to me, that's a challenge. I'm not saying that's not about presenting that work. Every show we have here has local artists in it. My question becomes: how can we help in a conversation that allows the artists that can that are international from the perception of other communities that come to visit actually see themselves as that and welcome an international energy, not into their work, but into the city. Like New Orleans artists are the only group of artists I and this is just perception that feels more threatened from outside artists than any other American community I've been to.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

Well, that might be because of, you know, New Orleans is a very parochial society.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Um, until I moved here like 12 years ago, I didn't even know black people were Catholic. Okay, I grew up in North Carolina, I had never met no black Catholic. Now everyone I know is Catholic.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

Um so it could be tied to that. Uh, and I don't want to make any assumptions. Um the strengths for the city. And, you know, the greatest resource anywhere, it's not the uh minerals, it's not the rare earth, it's the people, right? And you know, there is uh substantial uh creativity here that can go in a variety of directions. And sometimes I wonder if there's an over-emphasis on trying to attract from particular categories like tech and whatnot, and it's like, well, you have this entire cachet of all these artists who they're biting each other's arms in a way, but why not see how you can actually turn artists into an economic engine?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

Exactly. Okay, look at Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

Give us give us an example that you're thinking about.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:19

Well, I mean, uh when you look and for me, it's about a theater thing. It the fact that the city let the fringe festival die off. Fringe festival for performance, multi-like it's coming back from what I hear, but that was how people nationally could look at like who were artists in the field of performance, presenters, producers. How are you writing a play down here and nobody has a time of the year? Everybody else gets to have a conference, but we don't. And so when the French Festival wasn't doing well, that's a place where the city should step in. That's a place where private sector should step in. But the reason they don't is because maybe they haven't felt invited and welcomed into that part because we eat our own arms and we want to make sure that we're cool enough for all our like friends we already did 19 plays with. Hmm. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

Bringing it back. The Contemporary Arts Center. What are our positive metrics for you that signal you're gonna be moving in a positive direction? And outside of the money, because that's obviously an easy metric.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

I never use money as a metric because money I think is uh subjective, right? There are plenty of rich people who have no talent and no vision and don't even know what they're doing with all their cabillions of money, and they have no friends and their kids hate them. But that's a whole other story, right? For us, specifically, is this um one of the people on staff said to me, uh, she said, and she's one of our elders, she goes, I love that you're here now because there's a hum. There's a hum, a regular hum. And it's the regular hum, not the regular sound. And I think there's a difference because we can't have 15 things at the same time because actually it's just all glass with air pockets, and like I'm sure they can probably even hear us downstairs, right? So you can't have the dance studio and this and this and this all at the same time, but we can make a hum that's of value. So I'm trying to look at ideas that can make that hum happen. What would happen if we changed our hours? And we could be open during a time where people getting off work could actually come and not just once a month or what, you know, like, but really feel like that's just the staple, like, oh yeah, they're gonna be open till 10. They're always open till 10 on Wednesdays, not a big deal, right? How do you make space for people to feel invited and welcome? Which I learned from an organization out of Brooklyn, but they did most of their work here at the CAC long ago, and that was Urban Bushwomen. So a lot of our advocates, a lot of the people that like make things positive in this city have come through this city. We're travelers of this city as well. I think that that would be really helpful to just make a positive hum. And oh, and there's a crazy thing called keeping your word. Just keep your word. Hey, I said I was gonna do your play. Let's do it. This is what I have available, this is what's gonna happen. Instead of Like, and this is the great part about a leader like me because I'm super annoying in a lot of other ways, but I have no fear of whether you like me or not. I have two parents that love me, I have a core group of homies from all over the world that I have had to like work my entire life to have an affinity for, and vice versa. I'm here to serve and I'm here to do my job, and that service is to also feel good about myself. And I think that gets lost sometimes for arts leaders.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

I'm gonna probe a little. No fear of getting hurt. Like by by who? Well, you said you have no fear. What is your fear?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:44

Um the the fear of of failing out of fear. The fear of just failing, because it's like, you know what, it's just too much. Instead of going, well, you know what? Maybe we just have to cut back. Maybe before we announce a season, we really are only doing three things. I think a lot of times people that aren't artists can't gauge what it really takes to do something, and that's also what I think I think the frustrating part for me in this position is when do we get forgiven? And who hits 50 years old without making mistakes? If there's one person in New Orleans who made it to 50 who didn't screw up a marriage, a job, a whatever, doesn't have a person in their world that never ever wants to speak to them again, we will literally give them an award at our gala because I am exhausted from this assumption that an inanimate object has humanity. It's the people. And as the people change, it changes. George isn't here anymore. We've been in an um, it has been a material space for over two to three seasons. So please don't walk up to the black girl and tell her it's the Caucasian Arts Center. You look stupid when you do that. And I just think people need to know that. That that we're people, that our feelings get hurt too. And that there's this place where it's like, oh, you work in an institution, so I'm gonna say some mean stuff to you, and then you're shocked when I am a Scorpio. That's all I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:26

Out of curiosity, do you think, even though we're adults, uh, I mean, when when you mention that people will say these just shitty things, do you think we really never grow up?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:40

I think that many of us, it's not a matter of not growing up, it's a matter of like choosing not to be more self-aware as we get older. I think we all grow. For example, getting a psychiatrist in 2019, finally having because I thought I was just losing my mind, finally having, you know, like having your best friends be like, we love you no matter what, but something's weird, you're super annoying right now. Way more annoying than normal. And it coming from stress, it coming from all these things, and it triggering all these other things and triggering compulsive disorders and all this. Finally, having someone who put me on a cocktail for a very short time to then realize that I had a neurodiversity complexity, and now I'm able to apply for jobs because I can focus differently. I just thought I was lazy, but I'm not. Maybe I'm just a genius and nobody like gives me an opportunity. Can it be that instead? Why does it have to be this other thing that other people get to pick for you? So I think where we're gonna be challenging people is you will no longer be defining the building for us as we move into our next 50 years. We own our history, we own the ugliness, we own whatever you think the ugliness is, because every ugly story I've heard is like the most basic theater art stuff I've heard anywhere in the world. Like so-and-so said they were gonna do my show, but we didn't have a contract and then they didn't do my show. Yeah, that's how that works. Or I was I used to work there and I didn't get along with the boss, and so they let me go. Where have you worked where if you don't get along with your boss, you stay?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

Yeah. Oh, there are plenty of places like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

But my point is that that's confusing for me. Yes. Where we have done things where things were really ugly or didn't make sense had far more to do with one or two individuals within an organization that got, like, pardon the phrase, just whitewashing the whole space as one thing. No matter what we do here, we're never gonna be enough. Because we're not a museum and we're not a gallery.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:08

And because we get to define ourselves the way that we want to define ourselves, just ask the majority of toxic men out in the world how they feel about independent women. And that's where we are right now. Like, oh my gosh, you mean I made a ton of mistakes growing up? So that's how I feel about it. And I get if you don't want to rock with us, I understand if you don't want to come visit, but it will be your loss.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:37

What excites you about tomorrow for the CAC?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:42

Um, the investment the current staff has made and making them proud of me is really important to me. That's what I'm excited about. I'm just I'm shocked that a group of people who don't get paid their value, who are constantly going into the the community and being told they're stupid for working here, or that um someone in their their cohort deserves something from here, and that they're willing to like show up every day to do the work, to keep coming back, even when everybody else abandoned them, and you know who you are.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:32

Well, this is an example of true resilience, it's an example of leadership through action, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:40

Well, mostly there they lead me a lot, they make space, yeah, they make space for me, and so you know, I'm also the type of leader, I don't ask you to do something I don't want to do myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:53

Well, uh, I think sometimes we we conflate leadership with the actual position. And in my personal and professional experiences, I have encountered that the most effective individuals in those roles have actually been people who they realize, no, it's my team, the people I'm working with, they're leading me. I'm here to take a point and serve as interference, but they're actually the one carrying this through.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

We're also blessed because we have uh like our board of directors is in a place of really proactively understanding their history and having like everyone's always like, get new, you know, it's about new board members. Not really, although we have many, it's about spirit. It's about loving art. It's about like loving the people that want to make art. It's about knowing that the people that work at the front desk, for example, you're not gonna get a meeting with me if you've been rude to Miss Kim. It's not gonna be, oh, I talked to her and I was told by the front desk you didn't have a schedule, like you weren't available. If you show up at my door after Miss Kim told you not to, you will not be at this door again. Who she is is important to us. And so I just want us all as I think the most positive thing for the city is to allow a little bit of forgiveness during a time where we have been spending the past decade just hammering each other punitively beyond random, like the punishment punishments are not um equaling the crime in the arts here. I've noticed. We we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater every day, every day, and then the next day you're calling the same person telling them how you want something from them. I don't like to do that. We're gonna have to work on that as a community of care.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:08

As we come to a close. What would you say about the following? Ms. Hodges, you are in the same. You're in the city that is oppressively hot, horrifyingly humid. The infrastructure is breaking down, you know, there's a warning break almost every week. It's still poor. The city administration is heavily hundreds of million dollars in debt. Vulnerable to hurricanes, half the population is gone over the last 20 years. What's the point of being here? I mean, the outlook, you know, on the surface, short term, doesn't look bright. So, you know, what what keeps you here? And if anything, what would you tell folks? Actually, you're wrong, and I'll give you this reason as to why you should actually come here.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:20

That's so funny, because I've literally been having this conversation on the phone all week. I was talking to someone out of Pittsburgh where I was like, you should come here. Um it's interesting that you put it that way because uh the water main thing is the biggest issue here. It's like having to wake up and check to see if the water's poisoned, is really my biggest thing of being a tap water kid my whole life and hoping I wouldn't have to like pay for water. But on a serious note, I think it's funny when you say, Oh, you're so crazy. It's just as crazy as when I moved to London at 16 and didn't know anybody. Just as crazy as you know, going to participate in an artist's project where I don't speak French. I I think risk is still the most beautiful thing, and this city is always willing to risk it all for love, for food, for music, and that might be its downfall, but no more so than any other city. Um the truth is that uh what New Orleans celebrates the most is that it knows what it looks like to everybody else, even if it may not know that to everybody else it even looks prettier than that. And I think that that's what holds us back. So we spend a lot of time being like, I know who I am, and da-da-da-da-da. And don't tell me what I and I'm gonna do it like this, and you don't even have to come over here. And the person's like, I totally was gonna come over with food, but okay. That's what the city can feel like at its most challenging, at its most fantastic, it is it is oh my god, I'm dancing, you know, like there's a place to dance here till four o'clock. There's no place, no one in New York dances anymore. But you can just like walk down Broad Street, and there could be like four or five kids on the corner just dancing, and you can even say hi, and there's a warmth there. And I love that people expect you to see them when they walk by. You become more confident here. Um, I think that's where a lot of the like crazy um butting against heads is because this is a city where you get to feel good about yourself no matter where you are in your life, and I think that's magical because then you get to grow real different each time. You don't have to have a college degree to be a great artist in new in New Orleans, because um why would you just be really good at what you do and we'll we'll we'll come see it, we'll come pay for it. We just don't do that for intellectualized work, or you know, maybe we're not marketing right. So I think the difference at this organization is I'm not here to prove that we did anything right in the past. I'm here to be exactly what we are right now, which is trying to um figure out what the 21st century should look like for any institution, you know, that has to pay, you know, a hundred grand a month for bills and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:53

Any final thoughts you'd like to leave with the audience, whether it's about yourself, the center, the city, all three.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:04

We're worth forgiving and we're worth making space to come visit over the next couple of seasons. I think we need a space in between. We need a space that's complimenting and not competing. We need something that might be one of the few places where you get to discover other people, other uh aesthetics, other ways of looking at your life. As much as we want to say how wonderful New Orleans is, it is still in the South and it can still get very segregated at events. Wouldn't it be nice to have a space where you know no matter what what the event, at least when I go, I don't have to worry that I'm just that. Like I'm not, I don't feel isolated, I feel welcomed, and that's all I want to do. I just want people to have more fun and discovery.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

Well, Rail, I have to say I'm extremely grateful that you've welcomed me into your institutional home here uh and into your mind and heart and sharing these uh very passionate and astute uh insights. Uh I appreciate that. Uh for our listeners, uh, thank you for joining us on Brun Gart Law's Lang App, where we provide a little extra perspective because the devil is always fucking in the details. Invite others to listen, give your give us your suggestions. Rail, again, gratitude.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:40

Thank you for having me.