I suspect, Evan, that what I thought then was that when we look at institutions, obviously within, you know, the various manifestations of racism,

you know, the American economy, that they tend of necessity to operate a little more like machinery than like an ecology.

And I've always felt that the theater was something that was rooted in an ecology and the sustainability of that ecology and the care and tending of all of that was very, very important.

And that oftentimes it was possible when thinking about the support of new work or mounting an established script, that that's not taken into account in as much as it includes what seems to be in the air in your community in those days.

I think that the audiences for regional theaters, oftentimes the plays that they were seeing in that particular community's regional theater were the only plays they were seeing from year to year to year, that there was not a wide availability.

And of course, this is way before the ability to do anything like stream or, you know, the access that interested, you know, people might have in broadening their experience.

And so I thought that creating a kind of dialogue with the audience in as many ways as you could imagine, using not only the staff of the theater, but the board and various community organizations, helped to create and sustain the ecology.

As long as theater professionals want to give back to the community, the David Geffen School of Drama will always be able to train new generations of talent.