1 00:00:15,316 --> 00:00:17,500 I come from a background in which 2 00:00:17,500 --> 00:00:22,221 I never experienced any male members of my family cry. 3 00:00:28,938 --> 00:00:33,131 That inability to express any level of emotionality 4 00:00:33,131 --> 00:00:35,839 was something that I started to question. 5 00:00:39,208 --> 00:00:42,225 It doesn't allow for weakness nor vulnerability. 6 00:00:46,845 --> 00:00:49,831 Art became a pathway for me-- 7 00:00:51,230 --> 00:00:54,860 a way in which I could experience these vulnerabilities 8 00:00:54,860 --> 00:00:59,117 and wear them, and share them to an immediate audience. 9 00:01:01,660 --> 00:01:05,453 [Shaun Leonardo: The Freedom to Move] 10 00:01:07,508 --> 00:01:09,047 [PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER] --The quarterback scrambles out, 11 00:01:09,047 --> 00:01:12,079 --throws a pass that almost gets picked off by Shaun Leonardo. 12 00:01:13,223 --> 00:01:17,340 [LEONARDO] I played football for over ten years of my life. 13 00:01:17,340 --> 00:01:18,933 [PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER] --Leonardo, defensive back playing linebacker. 14 00:01:18,933 --> 00:01:21,079 LEONARDO: All of my work stems from that experience, 15 00:01:21,079 --> 00:01:23,950 of a dual identity between artist and athlete. 16 00:01:26,069 --> 00:01:28,590 I can recall as if it were yesterday, 17 00:01:28,590 --> 00:01:33,439 a coach that I actually love and I have fond memories of, 18 00:01:33,439 --> 00:01:36,869 says to me, as a way to enrage me, 19 00:01:36,869 --> 00:01:40,831 says, "I want to you play like they just let you out of Riker's." 20 00:01:46,107 --> 00:01:49,125 As a young man-- I'm 21 at the time-- 21 00:01:49,761 --> 00:01:52,179 you don't have the wherewithal or the tools 22 00:01:52,179 --> 00:01:55,020 to absorb that in any healthy manner. 23 00:01:55,020 --> 00:01:56,560 And so, what happens? 24 00:01:56,560 --> 00:01:58,079 It works. 25 00:01:58,079 --> 00:02:01,469 I actually do bring out the rage that he was looking for. 26 00:02:01,469 --> 00:02:03,846 [PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER] --Leonardo is able to push him inside and tackle him. 27 00:02:03,846 --> 00:02:07,454 --Great play by Shaun Leonardo with the game-saving tackle there. 28 00:02:08,810 --> 00:02:11,400 LEONARDO: I'm now 40 years old 29 00:02:11,400 --> 00:02:13,728 and I'm still thinking about that moment. 30 00:02:15,360 --> 00:02:18,650 When you are marked by your difference, 31 00:02:18,650 --> 00:02:21,780 by your color, by your perceived identity, 32 00:02:21,780 --> 00:02:25,641 you become this hyper-visible target. 33 00:02:27,781 --> 00:02:32,610 It's in that hyper-visibility that actually you become invisible, 34 00:02:32,610 --> 00:02:34,854 because people see right through you. 35 00:02:34,854 --> 00:02:37,354 --Are you ready!? --Yeah! 36 00:02:47,569 --> 00:02:49,400 After college, 37 00:02:49,400 --> 00:02:51,300 post my football career, 38 00:02:51,639 --> 00:02:54,540 I showed up in a Mexican wrestling mask 39 00:02:54,540 --> 00:02:56,705 and fought an invisible opponent. 40 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:01,256 [FIGHT BELL RINGS] 41 00:03:02,602 --> 00:03:04,154 [AUDIENCE CHEERING] 42 00:03:04,853 --> 00:03:07,557 ["El Conquistador Vs. The Invisible Man," 2006] 43 00:03:08,731 --> 00:03:11,140 With each match, it was important that 44 00:03:11,140 --> 00:03:14,667 the audience was left with Shaun Leonardo-- 45 00:03:15,769 --> 00:03:18,409 that the character was stripped 46 00:03:18,409 --> 00:03:21,519 and that you were left with the person that felt the need 47 00:03:21,519 --> 00:03:23,900 to go through this struggle 48 00:03:23,900 --> 00:03:26,225 in order to see himself. 49 00:03:29,488 --> 00:03:32,173 Can you imagine, there's no one in front of me. 50 00:03:33,190 --> 00:03:36,527 And so, even if something as little as a punch, 51 00:03:37,269 --> 00:03:40,530 you could register it just like this. 52 00:03:40,530 --> 00:03:44,650 Or if you're in the audience, what's actually going to be legible? 53 00:03:44,650 --> 00:03:45,650 I have to be able to... 54 00:03:45,650 --> 00:03:46,790 [SOUND OF FIST HITTING OPEN PALM] 55 00:03:46,790 --> 00:03:49,799 I have to be able to really dramatize it in such a way 56 00:03:49,799 --> 00:03:51,409 that you foresee it coming 57 00:03:51,409 --> 00:03:54,407 and then you see it follow through. 58 00:03:58,793 --> 00:04:01,749 I was offering the spectacle of violence 59 00:04:01,749 --> 00:04:05,489 and that identity of hyper-masculinity and aggression 60 00:04:05,489 --> 00:04:10,225 that is so often anticipated from a Black body. 61 00:04:13,340 --> 00:04:18,049 And this notion that, as a Black and Brown body, 62 00:04:18,049 --> 00:04:21,250 we move through the world and serve as a mirror 63 00:04:21,250 --> 00:04:24,098 for White people's projections. 64 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:27,027 [AUDIENCE CHEERS] 65 00:04:27,430 --> 00:04:28,323 --One! 66 00:04:28,323 --> 00:04:29,088 --Two! 67 00:04:29,088 --> 00:04:30,000 --Three! 68 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:31,986 [AUDIENCE CHEERS] 69 00:04:35,191 --> 00:04:38,123 ["Self-Portrait," 2010] 70 00:04:40,358 --> 00:04:46,631 And then discovering and learning and finding ways to distort that image, 71 00:04:48,390 --> 00:04:53,373 to portray and feel deeply a fuller self 72 00:04:54,030 --> 00:04:58,926 that is not contained within these projections or these stereotypes. 73 00:05:02,253 --> 00:05:04,540 That has been my mandate. 74 00:05:04,540 --> 00:05:10,090 That has been the very thing that I want to offer to the world. 75 00:05:13,375 --> 00:05:17,575 --Can anyone describe what was happening in their bodies? 76 00:05:17,575 --> 00:05:19,611 [MAN] --Very, very uncomfortable for me. 77 00:05:19,611 --> 00:05:21,287 --Like I feel my body getting hot. 78 00:05:23,660 --> 00:05:28,300 I wanted to pull more and more people into that exploration 79 00:05:28,300 --> 00:05:32,122 so that it would not be contained to my own narrative. 80 00:05:33,203 --> 00:05:38,414 It was through this strategy of physical embodiment that I could pull people into it. 81 00:05:40,130 --> 00:05:43,814 I wanted people to feel it and to allow their bodies 82 00:05:43,814 --> 00:05:46,713 to say what the piece needed to be. 83 00:05:49,129 --> 00:05:50,344 ["Primitive Games," 2018] 84 00:05:50,895 --> 00:05:52,979 [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE] 85 00:05:56,624 --> 00:05:57,759 --Participants! 86 00:05:58,797 --> 00:05:59,784 --Ready! 87 00:06:03,111 --> 00:06:04,173 --Bring it! 88 00:06:05,954 --> 00:06:08,164 [DRUMMING ECHOES THROUGHOUT ROTUNDA] 89 00:06:17,430 --> 00:06:18,898 --Left, yes; right, no. 90 00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:23,073 --Do you feel American? 91 00:06:27,459 --> 00:06:31,000 I really wanted to see if, 92 00:06:31,000 --> 00:06:35,855 by dialing into our experiences of confrontation, of conflict, 93 00:06:36,660 --> 00:06:41,140 we could sense some sort of truth in another person's body, 94 00:06:41,140 --> 00:06:44,430 and therefore question our perceptions of how we initially read 95 00:06:44,430 --> 00:06:45,923 an other. 96 00:06:50,564 --> 00:06:52,580 [BRASS BAND PLAYS A FUNERAL MARCH] 97 00:06:52,580 --> 00:06:54,847 ["The Eulogy," 2017] 98 00:06:59,466 --> 00:07:02,568 --What are you waiting for me to tell you? 99 00:07:05,397 --> 00:07:09,479 --His name was Trayvon Martin [BAND STRIKES] 100 00:07:09,479 --> 00:07:11,267 --and he was unarmed. 101 00:07:14,700 --> 00:07:18,754 When I saw the image of Trayvon Martin on the news, 102 00:07:19,220 --> 00:07:22,120 so much of my own experience of fear, 103 00:07:22,629 --> 00:07:25,610 and the ways that I was being perceived out in the world, 104 00:07:25,610 --> 00:07:27,080 all came rushing to the surface-- 105 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:29,411 things that I clearly had buried. 106 00:07:32,377 --> 00:07:35,964 As a young Brown kid growing up in Queens, 107 00:07:35,964 --> 00:07:40,378 I also started thinking about all the young brothers that I'd left behind. 108 00:07:41,522 --> 00:07:44,780 Then asking, "Well, why me?" 109 00:07:44,780 --> 00:07:47,590 Why was I the one that was able to make it out? 110 00:07:47,950 --> 00:07:50,210 To go to a good school, 111 00:07:50,210 --> 00:07:52,060 to pursue an MFA, 112 00:07:52,060 --> 00:07:54,330 to live according to my passion. 113 00:07:56,428 --> 00:07:58,580 It's taken me a long time to understand 114 00:07:58,580 --> 00:08:03,680 that I simply want more people in the world that look like me 115 00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:06,250 to be able to move through the world with that kind of 116 00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:08,080 freedom. 117 00:08:08,652 --> 00:08:12,591 --Okay, what we're going to do is just walk. 118 00:08:14,117 --> 00:08:16,746 --Walk naturally. 119 00:08:18,166 --> 00:08:21,069 --Take up as much space as possible. 120 00:08:21,620 --> 00:08:24,110 --Walk your walk. 121 00:08:24,110 --> 00:08:29,779 [In 2017, Shaun co-founded "Assembly," a criminal justice diversion program at the arts non-profit Recess.] 122 00:08:31,347 --> 00:08:38,189 [Youth charged with misdemeanor offenses and criminal possession of a weapon participate as alternative sentencing.] 123 00:08:39,264 --> 00:08:44,038 We move through what I started to describe as a visual storytelling curriculum. 124 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:48,419 What we do is sculpt the scene of that story 125 00:08:48,419 --> 00:08:50,360 or of that memory. 126 00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:57,690 So the storyteller is allowed to look at their story through a very different set of eyes. 127 00:08:58,474 --> 00:09:04,031 They start to gather more meaning as to how that narrative is of an individual 128 00:09:04,031 --> 00:09:07,682 and not some preconceived notion of criminality. 129 00:09:08,127 --> 00:09:10,541 [MAN] --If he runs, we all got to run. 130 00:09:12,660 --> 00:09:16,380 I've had to really deal with the philosophical crisis 131 00:09:16,380 --> 00:09:20,760 of what it means to be enacting an art space program 132 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:25,930 that I believe has freedom as its central value and goal, 133 00:09:25,930 --> 00:09:27,510 and yet, 134 00:09:27,510 --> 00:09:31,913 still operating in something that is really a criminal justice space. 135 00:09:35,748 --> 00:09:39,460 ["Mirror/Echo/Tilt," 2019 Collaboration with Melanie Crean and Sable Elyse Smith] 136 00:09:39,460 --> 00:09:41,630 The only thing that I've arrived at, 137 00:09:41,630 --> 00:09:44,330 which keeps me in the work, 138 00:09:44,330 --> 00:09:48,686 is the personal change that I can sense in these individuals-- 139 00:09:50,530 --> 00:09:54,421 in these young people that are the young people I grew up with. 140 00:09:57,685 --> 00:10:00,370 I always return to the same thing: 141 00:10:00,370 --> 00:10:04,690 the art is the very thing that has power in this space 142 00:10:04,690 --> 00:10:06,460 because it is unfixed. 143 00:10:07,117 --> 00:10:09,132 It cannot be defined. 144 00:10:13,900 --> 00:10:19,020 By being able to really exist in your own body 145 00:10:19,020 --> 00:10:24,894 and understand that you do not need to be defined by an experience-- 146 00:10:25,360 --> 00:10:27,865 in this case, arrest and incarceration-- 147 00:10:30,238 --> 00:10:35,941 it allows you to move forward with a little more sense of joy; 148 00:10:37,276 --> 00:10:40,605 what Ta-Nehisi Coates describes as "the beautiful struggle." 149 00:10:42,544 --> 00:10:45,260 It's by being in your full self 150 00:10:45,260 --> 00:10:47,483 and attempting to live, 151 00:10:47,907 --> 00:10:50,000 that can never be taken away. 152 00:10:51,170 --> 00:10:56,252 To get anyone to start imagining possibilities for themselves again, 153 00:10:57,163 --> 00:11:00,000 that is what we all should be after.