Tamara Kissane: 00:00:08

This is Artist Soapbox. Through interviews and original scripted audio fiction. We deliver stories that speak to your hearts and your minds.

Griffin James: 00:00:26

Hello, Artist Soapbox. My name is Griffin James, and in today's episode, I had the absolute pleasure to talk with Aysia Slade. Aysia is a lover of stories and the art of theater making. She is a 2021 graduate of North Carolina State University, where she majored in psychology with minors in philosophy, theater, and political science. While at her Alma mater, she participated in over a dozen shows on and off stage and founded the Black Artist Coalition, which created a space for fellowship and advocacy for black artists in every discipline. She is currently attending duke university school of law. Her most recent project STATIC won the creative artist award for playwriting at NC state together. We talked about her play STATIC, creating art without causing harm to the artist, her writing process, black theater and more. Aysia is a multi-talented artist who. Such a thoughtful and nuanced approach to creating new work in theater. I hope you all enjoy today's offering as much as I had the pleasure of creating it. And as always thank you for your time, whether you are at home at work or in your car, whether you are a longtime listener or here for the first time. Thank you. And welcome to Artist Soapbox. Hello, Artist Soapbox. My name is not Tamara. It is Griffin, but welcome to the Artist Soapbox podcast. Today. I am talking with actress, singer, dancer, playwright, and future lawyer, Aysia Slade. Aysia, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Aysia Slade: 00:02:32

Thank you so much for having me.

Griffin James: 00:02:34

Just as a quick introduction. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Aysia Slade: 00:02:39

Um, yeah. So you spoke a little bit about it in your intro, but I've been doing theater pretty much my entire life. In undergrad. I really used that as a time to explore what theater meant to me and how I wanted to be a part of my life going forward. I unfortunately graduated right during the pandemic. Um, as many people know that kind of really threw arts into a world. So right now I'm in law school and trying to, you know, situate myself, situate what I wanna do in my future and kind of find out what that looks like for me.

Griffin James: 00:03:15

Do you have pieces of what that might look like? Or, and it's totally okay if you, if it's still like a vague idea, because I know for me, it kind of is

Aysia Slade: 00:03:26

Yeah. It's definitely still quite vague. I've actually found that playwriting, which I'm glad that we get to talk about today has been one of the best ways for me to keep my love of theater alive. Because unlike shows there's no rehearsal schedule. So if I have a random idea at 3:00 AM for a play, I can work on it at 3:00 AM. And I've just been, trying to write as much as possible while also maintaining my classwork and surprisingly law school has been full of inspiration, which not something you would think, but there's a lot of things. In my life and the things that I'm passionate about in the law that I kind of find, have inspired me to write and inspired me to work those things into my art. So I've kind of been, trying to find a balance between pursuing my passion and also just having a career, which I find fulfilling on the other

Griffin James: 00:04:16

hand. Just because. I love bragging about you. Can you, can you tell our dear listeners not only where you attend law school, but what your LSAT score was?

Aysia Slade: 00:04:30

yeah, I can. So I go to duke university. I got a 1 75 on my LSAT. Yeah. I have to say that the LSAT has not been the predictor for law school success though. Law school has been kicking my butt pretty aggressively, but it's

Griffin James: 00:04:47

been. Well, I I'm glad that has been fun despite the butt kicking Yeah, but yeah, in addition to being a, a future lawyer and a current law student and a playwright and a theater maker, you have a strong tenure and a strong history of theater under your belt. And I'm specifically thinking. How you were the 20, 20 creative artist winner for playwriting and see state university for your original play STATIC. Can you tell us a little bit more about your play?

Aysia Slade: 00:05:24

Yeah, so STATIC for me was a really personal story. I kind of wanted to tell a really intimate story of mental health and in the backdrop that wasn't too overwhelmingly dark. If that makes sense. I really like the balance of joy and sadness. And so I wanted static to kind of capture the highs of low and lows of what friendship can be, what lifelong friendship can be. The show has three main characters who have been friends for the whole entire lives. They're now freshman in college, which is a incredibly difficult time of change. Time of trying to find out who you wanna be. And I thought that that was just a really good setting to explore those themes in a way that felt really true. And I wanted it to, especially knowing what I was writing it for since I was writing with the creative artist award in mind, and with like students and other college students in mind, I wanted it to feel true to us and what we were going through at the time. And so I really wanted to basically use these three characters and their friendship as a way to explore the themes that a lot of people are going through at that time.

Griffin James: 00:06:39

And I just wanna say as a, as a person who experienced it, In the college age, I felt like you did a really tremendous and beautiful job at capturing those themes and those intimate friendships. Thank you. Yeah. And I want to applaud you for that. Cuz I have read multiple plays that try to tackle mental illness and I, I just leave feeling more angry at the play. Yeah. And I, it feel, it just, it just feels more stressful and upsetting than it does cathartic mm-hmm so, so STATIC was such a relief for me to experience.

Aysia Slade: 00:07:14

Yeah, I really that's something that I really wanted to come across. I really wanted the actors to not be put into extremely stressful situations to bring the art to life. And I didn't wanna put a lot of stress on the audience either because I think these topics are so heavy. It's very easy to make a play that relies on shock factor and grief and kind of abuses those emotions for the audience's benefit. and I really think that the moments speak for themself and, and not much has to be done for people to feel the emotions that you want them to feel and to know where you want them to go, because they're, they are so pertinent to everyone's life's.

Griffin James: 00:07:55

In addition to winning the creative artist contest at NC state, it was produced as a production with NC state university theater. Can I ask how involved were you with the rehearsal process as it was going up?

Aysia Slade: 00:08:10

Yeah, I, I went to a couple of rehearsals, but honestly wanted to step back a little bit because. The writing of STATIC was so personal to me. Like these characters were based on people. I knew from high school on things that I experienced, things that my friends have experienced. And so I knew that if I was in there in the theater every day, I would get a little bit annoying probably. And I also wanted to see what my work could do on its own when I wasn't there, like standing guard over. Because I had watched it so carefully during the writing process and because I had been handling it so carefully for the four years while I was working on it, I wanted to give it a chance to stand on its.

Griffin James: 00:08:53

I think that's a good approach. Yeah. Um, when my first play got staged reading, I was at every rehearsal and looking back, I'm just like, huh? I could have done a lot less

Aysia Slade: 00:09:07

yeah. I still think I could have done more. I'm not sure if it was the right choice or not. I just, it was what felt right at the moment. And I think that the play ended up being really beautiful. Without me being super involved, but I was there to answer questions whenever they needed me to, but I, I did wanna kind of let them work with it on their own a little bit. And like

Griffin James: 00:09:27

you said, it was what you felt was best in the moment. And I think as we are in those current moments, it's best to just honor what we are feeling. and if we learn later that we wanna try it a different way, then we know for next time. But yeah, in that moment, I think it was very wise. Just honor what you were feeling and how it would help the play develop.

Aysia Slade: 00:09:49

Yeah, definitely. I think that's honestly, one of the things I love the most about playwriting as opposed to other forms of writing. like, I don't think STATIC is ever gonna be full, like fully finished where I'm like, I'm not gonna make any changes. I'm not gonna do anything else to it. Like if I get another staging of STATIC, I already know the things that I wanna change. I already, I did edits of the script after opening night for the production. Like I, I like the idea. It's one of the things I love about theater in general is that the art is always living and breathing and it's always changing. So you never have to like step away from it and be like, okay, like I'm wipe my hands. I'm done. Cuz even once you're done, there's someone else who's there for the next step who will breathe new life into it, you know? So it's. It's like, it's always evolving, always changing, even if I did say like, okay, I'm done editing it. I'm not looking at it anymore. There's someone else there who will look at it and who, even if they're not changing the language will bring something different and something new.

Griffin James: 00:10:50

Yes. I loved hearing you say that. Cuz a lot of it resonated with me. I was also making revisions during shows. I didn't give them to the actors. I'm not that kind of person but um, I, yeah,

Aysia Slade: 00:11:06

I, Mia had to tell me like, Hey. The show is like, very soon you cannot bring any more edits. And I was like, no, that's fair. That's really fair.

Griffin James: 00:11:13

Yeah. I was definitely making those edits as well. And after the show, I continued to make more edits mm-hmm and yeah, and I feel like that's something a lot of playwrights. Deal with, is the idea that it's not where you want it to be yet, or always finding something to change. Mm-hmm and I think about lovesick by John Cari, who has had, I don't know, 16 additions that number's made up. Don't fact check But like it's premiered on Broadway and he's still revising it. Yep. And then, you know, they'll have revivals of shows that are totally different and mm-hmm, the script has changed and I,

Aysia Slade: 00:11:51

yeah, I, I really love the fact that, you know, you never really, the show is never really over. Yes.

Griffin James: 00:11:57

It's a new life every time. For the rehearsals you did sit in on, what was it like to hear that out loud? And did it like change how you saw the work or the trajectory you wanted to take at all?

Aysia Slade: 00:12:10

Yeah, I think it definitely did. I think, especially with the type of play that STATIC was where I'm trying to present this lifelong friendship. I think the language that you use when you're close to someone is really important. and that you talk with lifelong friends differently than you would talk with someone that you just met. And so making sure that it was dialogue that basically rolled off the actor's tongues. And I think being an actor myself, definitely informed how I wanted to do this, but it was important to me that like none of my actors had a line where they were like, I really don't know how I'm supposed to say this. This is not something that my character would say, this feels so unnatural. I wanted it to flow because I think that flow was so important for establishing this relationship in a way that is not just telling the audience that, oh, they're lifelong friends, but showing it through their language and how easy it is for them to converse with each other. Part of that is the actors and physicality, but a large part of that is the text itself, giving them the room to have that closeness and to have that chemistry. And so when I was watching life performances and there were lines that if I heard like one or two readings and that one line felt awkward every time I was like, okay, the problem is me. mm-hmm and the problem is the text. Not just like, oh, that was an awkward reading. No, the problem is me. I need to fix this line in particular. To make sure that my actors can actually work with. And also, I remember one specific moment in the rehearsal process, cuz there are a few curse words in my show and I was listening to the rehearsals and I was like, wow, they've set the F word like 17 times in the last six minutes. And it seemed natural when I was the F word as in the four letter one. But they were cursing a lot and I realized that's not natural and it felt natural while I was writing it, but it really stood out. And so I think there are some things that you cannot tell from paper alone. You need to hear to see if it'll flow and to see if it flows in the wrong way.

Griffin James: 00:14:16

I think it's really important. So that was really, really helpful. To hear things out loud, leading up to the contest deadline. Did you have any informal readings of your own along the way?

Aysia Slade: 00:14:29

Honestly, before I submitted STATIC for the deadline, I honestly only had two other people, maybe three other people read it prior to submitting it. I. Very nervous about, and I think this is one of the things that I think I'm gonna try and do better next time, but I was very nervous about having people handle such what was essentially my artistic baby and my child and hearing their feedback. But I think that I will need to be braver with that going forward. But prior to the submission, it was really just trying to check for that flow that I told you about and having, you know, maybe me and one friend or me and a partner reading scenes out loud, just to see if we can back and forth feeling going, but never like a true reading, which I think I, I probably should have done. Because once I got to do them as part of the creative artist contest, it was really, really helpful. No, that

Griffin James: 00:15:29

makes com complete sense. I know for myself, I, I didn't really show it to anyone it being my play. Yeah. I didn't show it to anyone. I didn't have anyone read it until I was told that I was getting a staged reading. Because I'm like, oh, oh no, no, no, no, not ready. What do you mean Yep. Yeah. And it's like, okay. I gotta actually I actually gotta do the work now. yeah. But yeah, no, I totally understand though, what you were saying about it being your artistic baby, because for me as well, it was my first play. It was. It was based on family history. So it's a, it's a very personal piece for me. And I think that's part of why I was lingering in the rehearsal so often. Yeah. I just felt so protective of it and I, and yeah, it's a very brave thing just to write a play at all, but I think it's an even more brave thing just to share that with the world.

Aysia Slade: 00:16:23

Yeah, I definitely agree. I remember sitting in opening night actually and being like, oh my God, like all these people are here, basically getting the inside of my like high school diary and they're gonna think it's awful and cringy and they're all gonna hate it. And it's too close to home and just having all that anxiety. That's why I only went to see opening night and closing night because I just, it was too much for me. And I loved it and I'm gonna keep writing place, but it was very painful because I think writing can be very, very personal. And so it's a lot to take in sometimes.

Griffin James: 00:17:02

What was your process like as you were first developing your script? Do you self-imposed deadlines at all? Or do you have any structures in place to help you just get through the first script and revisions?

Aysia Slade: 00:17:15

Yeah. So usually I'll start with an outline. Once I have that first spark of an idea, I'll start trying to make an outline. I. But the idea for STATIC really was STATIC was like seven different plays before it became what it is. I changed who the main character was several times I changed their relationship. The plot, the storyline, all I knew was I had a few specific scenes that were sparks in my head that I knew I wanted to. and I had specific characters that I wanted to see on stage. And so weaving them together is kind of what I used the outlining process for to decide like which story actually allows me to best bring out the themes that sparked the idea and, and best allows me to put these, put these characters on show in a way that feels honest and true. So once I get the outline done, then it's really up to God TBH I it's really outta my hands. And it's a very slow process. I've never been blessed enough to be able to write full time where I'm not doing something else during the day and writing when I have time. And I was quite literally writing static for four years, which it is barely 50 pages. So that says something, but I, once I had that first spark, I wasn't very disciplined about like getting stuff on the page until it got down to when it was time to submit. And I was like, okay, if I'm gonna write this, like it's now or never, I need to do it. And I need to like stop dilly ding about. I think one of the things I struggle with is once I have the outline and I write my favorite scenes, it's harder for me to fill in those details. And I think that's where I was dragging my feet a little bit, but once it came down to it, it was kind of like, okay, I have to fill in these holes and I have to add some gravitas to it and add some weight to the play so that it's not just these very striking moments and nothing in between. I remember in a couple of the first readings actually, after I submitted it, one of the main things I got it back as feedback was, there are a lot of really good moments, but we don't know what's going on. And I was like, that's, that's really fair. And that is my fault because I don't like telling you what's going on and I need to get better at that. So I just kind of. Do an outline, hit my favorite things and then fill in the blanks. I'm probably gonna try and do better at that. And actually going in like a chronological order. That's a lie because in the plays I'm writing right now, I still have only written my favorite scenes, but yeah, that's, that's my process. No deadlines. Just vibes, I

Griffin James: 00:19:59

guess. I mean, if I can just say, I feel like the more writers I talk to, the more I realize very few of us write chronologically. Yeah. And I don't think it's necessarily. Bad thing. I think just writing any scene at all is better. Cuz if writing chronologically is gonna just stump you and you don't get any writing done, cuz you don't want know what happens next. Mm-hmm I feel like that's a little bit worse than just writing out of sequence and patching it together later.

Aysia Slade: 00:20:29

Yeah, that's probably true. I think I just need to get. More proactive about patching it together and instead of dragging my feet on it. Um, but yeah, I definitely do not write in a chronological order. I write in order of inspiration is most accurate. I definitely feel you with. The idea of that deadline, really just expediting the, the entire process.

Griffin James: 00:20:52

Mm-hmm yeah. I think about Mike Wiley, who, who once said the quickest way to get work done is to book it Yeah. Cause like, I, I know I can set deadlines for myself. and then I can ignore them. Mm-hmm who the hell am I? like, I, I know I won't punish myself. Are you? No. Yeah, the moment it's something external, it just clicks something different in my brain and I'm just like, oh, I gotta get into them. I need it.

Aysia Slade: 00:21:20

I actually have to get this done now. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely, definitely kicked me into gear a little bit. And it was also like my junior year. So I, I wasn't less stressed, but I was more focused and I felt more prepared as a theater artist. Once it got closer to the deadline to actually take on the work that I wanted to do, because I was more sure of myself as a writer and what I wanted the show to be about.

Griffin James: 00:21:46

You may have already touched on this a bit, but is there anything you wish you knew before or anything you learned along the way that you wanna share with anyone who might be interested in writing their first play?

Aysia Slade: 00:21:58

Uh, yeah, I would say you really just gotta do it. because whatever you write first, you're probably gonna hate anyway. That's just, or at least let me not push my insecurities on other people, but if you do write something and you do hate it, you have the opportunity to revise. You have the opportunity to go back. But getting that first step done and putting pen to paper and actually taking steps towards completing it is the hardest step and the most important step in the process. And then once it's complete, you can go back, you can revise, you can have your friends, look at it, give their advice, have them talk to you about what they need, but all of those steps are a lot easier. Once you have actually completed what you're working on. So I think just kind of allowing yourself to be scared at first that you're gonna write something that you don't like, but not allowing that fear to stop you from writing.

Griffin James: 00:22:54

Yeah. I think that's the advice, not a single writer wants to hear, but they need to hear is that they just need to write Yeah. Yeah. It's as simple and as hard as that

Aysia Slade: 00:23:05

mm-hmm, it really is. I feel like once you have that spark of an idea, Or inspiration. You can't let it go. Or at least I've never found a writer. Who's able to have an idea and just let it go. So either you're gonna write the play or you're gonna go in saying, thinking about how you wish you had written the play mm-hmm So you might as well write the play.

Griffin James: 00:23:28

Another fun fact about you is that you have a degree in psychology. So with your background in psychology, I'm wondering if you did any specific research to help shape the world of static.

Aysia Slade: 00:23:41

Yeah. So STATIC for me was really centered around mental health because I wanted a way to combine psychology and the importance of mental health with my love of theater, cuz I thought that would be a really good avenue to explore that. And so I was a, a research assistant with the Black Health Lab on NC state's campus for a semester. And there we just kind of learned. The effects of living in a racialized society and how that can affect the mental health of young Black people and Black juveniles. and being a Black juvenile and being a young Black person who had experienced mental health problems firsthand, I think combining that greater social awareness with my own personal experiences kind of brought static to life. You know, I, I think STATIC was my first play. It was really, really personal and more informed by my own personal experiences and the people that I've known. And the ways that I've seen mental health issues and depression present itself in a variety of ways throughout my life. The character of Jay who is the main character in the show deals with depression. And in a way that I think is very unique where he's a very bright, happy going person. And I had a friend in high school who was just like that and super outgoing, super talkative all the time. And one day they just didn't come to class were like, A couple of weeks. And then they came back and said that they were hospitalized for suicidal ideations. And I remember everyone being so shocked because this is the happy go lucky person. This is the person who's not supposed to feel sadness and not supposed to have all these burdens. And so it was really important for me, that STATIC was informed by these real people and informed by these real stories, which impacted me. But also aware of different societal issues and different impacts that I had studied and researched in my lab. Um, so it was really a combination of those that kind of brought static to where it is.

Griffin James: 00:26:02

I think what I'm curious about is, as you were researching and writing, did you do, like, was it simultaneous process or did you do one before the other.

Aysia Slade: 00:26:13

For me, it was kind of, I went in with the idea of what I wanted static to look like. And when there were moments that my personal experience failed me, because I wasn't writing about, you know, a Black young woman experiencing depression. I was writing about a Black young man. And so then I would fall back on, I, I took time to notice where my personal experiences did not reach. and where, what I've experienced was not accurate or would not be able to accurately express that point of view. And that's when I would fall back on my research really as a way to fill in those gaps in my own personal understanding. Yeah. So it was kind of a simultaneous or really more of like an in and out process between writing and having a flow and going what I know, and then taking a step back and being like, okay, is this an accurate representation? Of what someone in this position would feel right now. And I'm actually writing a play right now, which is about criminal, the criminal justice system, which I'm handling in a completely different way, because there's so much research that has to be done with it's a bit more technical or static was so personal. And so I think for a play like the one I have in mind, I want to do all the groundwork first and then build the story from there because there is so much technicality underlying it.

Griffin James: 00:27:36

Part of why I was asking that was, um, admittedly selfish because, um, I, I have an idea for a play and I, I was like, I gotta do my research, but I find, I just keep getting stuck in research and I'm not actually writing, but I'll research and call that writing even though it's not the same thing. Yeah.

Aysia Slade: 00:27:55

I definitely feel that right now. I think for me, I always get pulled back to writing because writing is what I'm actually like excited about. And so whenever I'm trying to, and I just kind of gravitate towards the part that excites me the most. So I think I have the opposite problem where I know I need to do more research, but I want to like, just jump in and write. But I honestly don't think that doing too much research could possibly be a bad thing because. When you're writing about like other people's lived experiences, I think accuracy is so important or else the work can be really harmful. So I think, I think as long as you write, eventually no harm in research.

Griffin James: 00:28:37

Yeah. But one thing I, I am curious about is given the contents of your play, I'm curious what measures you took to care for yourself as you were writing it.

Aysia Slade: 00:28:48

So it was really important to me and I think this was informed by the fact that I was an actor first, before I decided to try playwriting and get into that, that STATIC handled these really heavy topics in a way that was thoughtful towards the actors and thoughtful towards myself about the amount of grief that I was putting myself into while I was writing and what I was asking of my actors while they were performing. So for me, after writing, you know, heavy scenes, I honestly found it very cathartic the same way as writing in a journal, or just getting the thoughts that I've had before or thoughts that I've heard before, or the inspiration out of me and onto the page. Was really a, the, a therapeutic process for myself. Just, it allowed me to make use of those negative emotions in a way that could help other people or entertain other people. Hopefully. So when I was writing those scenes, it was really important to me that I was doing it with the actors in mind and keeping in mind what I was asking them to do. While I want to reach the audience, and while I want them to understand the themes that I'm trying to portray and to feel the emotions that I want them to feel, I am a theater maker first and it's important to me that audiences are not being reached at the expense of my actors or at the expense of myself. And I think that one of the main ways that I did that and static was just trying to avoid grossly visceral scenes, even though they are such visceral moments, still allowing the actor's room to breathe within those scenes while portraying the grief and while portraying the anger and the hurt, still giving them room to not be fully immersed in. To where they feel like they themselves can't breathe. So for me, that was one of my main goals with STATIC, outside of just what it does for me, but what it does for the actors as well, just to be able to portray those things in a healthy way.

Griffin James: 00:31:01

I really, really love that answer. And I really appreciate that you wrote with, with the actors in mind and just their wellbeing, having their wellbeing in mind. I think about a lot. Plays that I've seen or have worked on. And there are moments that just feel like, like trauma porn and, uh, yes, exactly. And you said it best earlier, how it is just included more for the sake of shock value to elicit a reaction out of the audience rather than to serve a greater purpose in the play. Mm-hmm And, um, not to name names, cough, cough, Hairspray, cough, cough, Ragtime Yeah. Sometimes that that shock value is meant to serve the purpose of a white savior complex. Mm. Yeah. And I just, I really appreciate that you are. Questioning the, the structures that are currently in place and trying to reconfigure how we create art in a way that is beneficial. Not only for the people who create it and the audiences, but the story itself.

Aysia Slade: 00:32:06

Yeah, exactly. And I think. My perspective on this is really informed by Black theater, because I think that the history of African American theater, that just like you said, the idea of seeing Black pain on the stage to serve white audiences and me being a Black playwright and knowing that I want to have people of color on my stage. Even if, as the main characters, as the happy characters, the sad characters, I want to have people of color. I want to have diversity and gender and sexuality and race. I, and I don't ever want to use the pain of my actors, of my Black actors, of my minority actors to serve, especially the audiences that we have in North Carolina which are usually older white audiences. And I want them to leave with something substantial. But the history of abusing these viewpoints and these minority viewpoints, just hoping that the audience might maybe be able to understand what real minorities go through. That's simply not worth it to me to go that far and to hurt my actors. I want acting in my shows to be an experience that is like you said, beneficial on both sides. And I think there's just a long history of a theater that features minority characters abusing them and giving them tragic ends and tragic beginnings. And I don't think that that's necessarily necessary. And so when I was writing static and it's so heavy, and I knew that I would be dealing with, you know, suicide, which is such a tragic topic, it was important to me that I wasn't asking. My actors to put themselves in incredibly compromising physicians or have to strip their souls bare, to be on stage and bear it all for people who at the end of the day, even, even though my hope is for them to understand. And my hope is for them to leave feeling like. They feel the pain that my actor was trying to portray at the end of the day, they there's a good chance that they'll leave and they won't feel any differently about minorities, about students, about the actors, about the characters and that they won't be changed. And so I'm not willing to risk their safety for the hope of that.

Griffin James: 00:34:35

I'm just snaps to all of that. because you mentioned it earlier. I'm just interested. What are some of the black theater pieces and playwrights who have inspired you and what would you recommend for listeners to read or watch or study up on?

Aysia Slade: 00:34:53

Yeah, I think that my favorite show of all time is for colored girls, which is kind of a stereotypical favorite show, but is, but it's forever. Yeah. Like it's, I think the

Griffin James: 00:35:06

stereotypical for a reason, because it's good. It's very, very good.

Aysia Slade: 00:35:09

And I think it, again, captures what I was talking about. The stories that the women tell in that show are very traumatic and very heavy, but it's surrounded by so much life. And the poetry gives so much life to the words into the women, and it allows the joys of being black to show through the pain. And I think that's really important. And so that balance of telling these dark, dark stories, but still showing that even through the pain, it's worth it, even through the grief it's worth it. And that there's joy somewhere in that is really important to me. And it's why I love that show so, so much. So I think that's a great example of an author or a playwright who's handled Black grief with just such tender hands. It really feels like a play that was written by Black women for Black women and invites by audiences and invites other racial groups and other genders to come in and be a part of the story. But it doesn't prioritize those audiences over the women that it's about. And I think that's the opposite of stories, which trivialize grief. Or perpetuate black tragedy solely for the benefit of audiences who are mainly white.

Griffin James: 00:36:31

That was a beautiful answer. Thank you.

Aysia Slade: 00:36:34

thank you for letting me talk about it. Oh no, I'm trying to get tickets to see it in on Broadway right now. Oh my God. I love that show so much. Did you say they, they moved up the closing date. Yeah, I did. That's why I'm like stressing out, trying to get there.

Griffin James: 00:36:48

Right. I want to see it. That's a show. I don't want to leave this earth without having seen at least once mm-hmm because like, I've read it. Like I, I want to see it set to

Aysia Slade: 00:36:57

dance. Exactly. Exactly. I think it'll yeah, I think it's gonna be so beautiful. I was like telling my mom, like let's just hop on the plane right now and go see it. We can make

Griffin James: 00:37:06

it happen. I do wanna ask if you have any final thoughts or points that you wanna bring up before we close.

Aysia Slade: 00:37:14

I think the main thing that I want people to walk away with is that when you're writing to consider the impact, your writing will have not just on audiences, on the actors who will portray your characters.

Griffin James: 00:37:26

Thank you so much for agreeing to do this and to speak with me and for sharing so openly.

Aysia Slade: 00:37:33

Yeah, this again. SuperDuper fun. I love, love talking about the artistic process. It allows me to procrastinate participating in the artistic process.

Griffin James: 00:37:45

Ooh, I feel that

Tamara Kissane: 00:37:49

established in 2017 artist soapbox is a podcast production studio based in North Carolina. Artist soapbox produces original scripted audio fiction and an ongoing interview podcast about the creative process. We cultivate aspiring audio Dramatists and producers, and we partner with organizations and individuals to create new audio content. For more information and ways to support our work check out artist soapbox.org, or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The artist soapbox theme song is ashes by Juliana Finch.