00:00If you walk in a room and you feel like the other and you feel like your voice does not
00:07matter in those moments, choose freedom over fear.
00:11Black women are like the best thing to happen in my life.
00:15We must continue dancing together, even if that means showing the world that sometimes I need alcohol to find my
00:24inner rhythm.
00:25You all have taught me by example what the role of the artist is.
00:30To disrupt, to re-mold and to create.
00:33Be passion driven. There's no strategy to life, no strategy to career, although many people say that there is.
00:41I think the best strategy is to be strategy-less and to focus on following our passion.
00:47I wanted to do something that I felt was a bit of myself, that I didn't see a lot and
00:54that I'd never really seen through the whole of my training.
00:56So I wrote this play called Chewing Gum Dreams and it was a one-woman show where I played I
01:03think about 11 different characters.
01:04I didn't kind of like make a declarative statement or hang anybody over the head with a message, but I
01:08just wanted to show, you know, a slice of life and sort of normalize black men.
01:13We're not monolithic, we are multi-dimensional, and we have a right to have our stories told.
01:20Remind each other that we are free, equal, worthy of respect and safety, even if the world tells us something
01:29different.
01:29I challenge you to not let others deny you, and more importantly, I challenge you to not deny yourselves.
01:39Because you must survive, because we love you.
