V to the Tenth!

On empowerment
“Doing the play itself is a completely empowering experience. If you perform in it, you have to speak the word and you have to get out there on stage and say it. If you direct it, you have to put yourself out there to organize it. If you produce it, you have to really put yourself on the line in the world. So I would say all the people who are involved in the production usually have big, life-changing experiences.

“Then we talk about people who come to see it, which is a whole other huge group of people. Then there are the people who wish it wasn’t happening, which is a whole other huge group of people. To sit in the dark in a community of strangers and listen to all the things you’re not supposed to be saying or thinking about … we’ve seen this has an enormous impact.”
On priorities

“First of all, your focus can’t be money. Your focus has to be your mission and your intention, and I think a lot of times people get so caught up in raising money that they forget why they’re doing it. People are attracted to actions that transform and change; if they feel they can be part of that, they give their time and they give their money.

“If people just feel like you want their money, you’re actually not asking for all of them; you’re not asking for the part of them they need activated and the part of them which is dying to be useful. So you may get some money, but I think you get more money when you engage people wholly, and I think what we’ve seen is that when people feel like their money is action, they give it.”
On power to the people