WEBVTT 00:00:15.316 --> 00:00:17.500 I come from a background in which 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:22.221 I never experienced any male members of my family cry. 00:00:28.938 --> 00:00:33.131 That inability to express any level of emotionality 00:00:33.131 --> 00:00:35.839 was something that I started to question. 00:00:39.208 --> 00:00:42.225 It doesn't allow for weakness nor vulnerability. 00:00:46.845 --> 00:00:49.831 Art became a pathway for me-- 00:00:51.230 --> 00:00:54.860 a way in which I could experience these vulnerabilities 00:00:54.860 --> 00:00:59.117 and wear them, and share them to an immediate audience. 00:01:01.660 --> 00:01:05.453 [Shaun Leonardo: The Freedom to Move] 00:01:07.508 --> 00:01:09.047 [PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER] --The quarterback scrambles out, 00:01:09.047 --> 00:01:12.079 --throws a pass that almost gets picked off by Shaun Leonardo. 00:01:13.223 --> 00:01:17.340 [LEONARDO] I played football for over ten years of my life. 00:01:17.340 --> 00:01:18.933 [PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER] --Leonardo, defensive back playing linebacker. 00:01:18.933 --> 00:01:21.079 LEONARDO: All of my work stems from that experience, 00:01:21.079 --> 00:01:23.950 of a dual identity between artist and athlete. 00:01:26.069 --> 00:01:28.590 I can recall as if it were yesterday, 00:01:28.590 --> 00:01:33.439 a coach that I actually love and I have fond memories of, 00:01:33.439 --> 00:01:36.869 says to me, as a way to enrage me, 00:01:36.869 --> 00:01:40.831 says, "I want to you play like they just let you out of Riker's." 00:01:46.107 --> 00:01:49.125 As a young man-- I'm 21 at the time-- 00:01:49.761 --> 00:01:52.179 you don't have the wherewithal or the tools 00:01:52.179 --> 00:01:55.020 to absorb that in any healthy manner. 00:01:55.020 --> 00:01:56.560 And so, what happens? 00:01:56.560 --> 00:01:58.079 It works. 00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:01.469 I actually do bring out the rage that he was looking for. 00:02:01.469 --> 00:02:03.846 [PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER] --Leonardo is able to push him inside and tackle him. 00:02:03.846 --> 00:02:07.454 --Great play by Shaun Leonardo with the game-saving tackle there. 00:02:08.810 --> 00:02:11.400 LEONARDO: I'm now 40 years old 00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:13.728 and I'm still thinking about that moment. 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:18.650 When you are marked by your difference, 00:02:18.650 --> 00:02:21.780 by your color, by your perceived identity, 00:02:21.780 --> 00:02:25.641 you become this hyper-visible target. 00:02:27.781 --> 00:02:32.610 It's in that hyper-visibility that actually you become invisible, 00:02:32.610 --> 00:02:34.854 because people see right through you. 00:02:34.854 --> 00:02:37.354 --Are you ready!? --Yeah! 00:02:47.569 --> 00:02:49.400 After college, 00:02:49.400 --> 00:02:51.300 post my football career, 00:02:51.639 --> 00:02:54.540 I showed up in a Mexican wrestling mask 00:02:54.540 --> 00:02:56.705 and fought an invisible opponent. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:01.256 [FIGHT BELL RINGS] 00:03:02.602 --> 00:03:04.154 [AUDIENCE CHEERING] 00:03:04.853 --> 00:03:07.557 ["El Conquistador Vs. The Invisible Man," 2006] 00:03:08.731 --> 00:03:11.140 With each match, it was important that 00:03:11.140 --> 00:03:14.667 the audience was left with Shaun Leonardo-- 00:03:15.769 --> 00:03:18.409 that the character was stripped 00:03:18.409 --> 00:03:21.519 and that you were left with the person that felt the need 00:03:21.519 --> 00:03:23.900 to go through this struggle 00:03:23.900 --> 00:03:26.225 in order to see himself. 00:03:29.488 --> 00:03:32.173 Can you imagine, there's no one in front of me. 00:03:33.190 --> 00:03:36.527 And so, even if something as little as a punch, 00:03:37.269 --> 00:03:40.530 you could register it just like this. 00:03:40.530 --> 00:03:44.650 Or if you're in the audience, what's actually going to be legible? 00:03:44.650 --> 00:03:45.650 I have to be able to... 00:03:45.650 --> 00:03:46.790 [SOUND OF FIST HITTING OPEN PALM] 00:03:46.790 --> 00:03:49.799 I have to be able to really dramatize it in such a way 00:03:49.799 --> 00:03:51.409 that you foresee it coming 00:03:51.409 --> 00:03:54.407 and then you see it follow through. 00:03:58.793 --> 00:04:01.749 I was offering the spectacle of violence 00:04:01.749 --> 00:04:05.489 and that identity of hyper-masculinity and aggression 00:04:05.489 --> 00:04:10.225 that is so often anticipated from a Black body. 00:04:13.340 --> 00:04:18.049 And this notion that, as a Black and Brown body, 00:04:18.049 --> 00:04:21.250 we move through the world and serve as a mirror 00:04:21.250 --> 00:04:24.098 for White people's projections. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:27.027 [AUDIENCE CHEERS] 00:04:27.430 --> 00:04:28.323 --One! 00:04:28.323 --> 00:04:29.088 --Two! 00:04:29.088 --> 00:04:30.000 --Three! 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:31.986 [AUDIENCE CHEERS] 00:04:35.191 --> 00:04:38.123 ["Self-Portrait," 2010] 00:04:40.358 --> 00:04:46.631 And then discovering and learning and finding ways to distort that image, 00:04:48.390 --> 00:04:53.373 to portray and feel deeply a fuller self 00:04:54.030 --> 00:04:58.926 that is not contained within these projections or these stereotypes. 00:05:02.253 --> 00:05:04.540 That has been my mandate. 00:05:04.540 --> 00:05:10.090 That has been the very thing that I want to offer to the world. 00:05:13.375 --> 00:05:17.575 --Can anyone describe what was happening in their bodies? 00:05:17.575 --> 00:05:19.611 [MAN] --Very, very uncomfortable for me. 00:05:19.611 --> 00:05:21.287 --Like I feel my body getting hot. 00:05:23.660 --> 00:05:28.300 I wanted to pull more and more people into that exploration 00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:32.122 so that it would not be contained to my own narrative. 00:05:33.203 --> 00:05:38.414 It was through this strategy of physical embodiment that I could pull people into it. 00:05:40.130 --> 00:05:43.814 I wanted people to feel it and to allow their bodies 00:05:43.814 --> 00:05:46.713 to say what the piece needed to be. 00:05:49.129 --> 00:05:50.344 ["Primitive Games," 2018] 00:05:50.895 --> 00:05:52.979 [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE] 00:05:56.624 --> 00:05:57.759 --Participants! 00:05:58.797 --> 00:05:59.784 --Ready! 00:06:03.111 --> 00:06:04.173 --Bring it! 00:06:05.954 --> 00:06:08.164 [DRUMMING ECHOES THROUGHOUT ROTUNDA] 00:06:17.430 --> 00:06:18.898 --Left, yes; right, no. 00:06:19.640 --> 00:06:23.073 --Do you feel American? 00:06:27.459 --> 00:06:31.000 I really wanted to see if, 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:35.855 by dialing into our experiences of confrontation, of conflict, 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:41.140 we could sense some sort of truth in another person's body, 00:06:41.140 --> 00:06:44.430 and therefore question our perceptions of how we initially read 00:06:44.430 --> 00:06:45.923 an other. 00:06:50.564 --> 00:06:52.580 [BRASS BAND PLAYS A FUNERAL MARCH] 00:06:52.580 --> 00:06:54.847 ["The Eulogy," 2017] 00:06:59.466 --> 00:07:02.568 --What are you waiting for me to tell you? 00:07:05.397 --> 00:07:09.479 --His name was Trayvon Martin [BAND STRIKES] 00:07:09.479 --> 00:07:11.267 --and he was unarmed. 00:07:14.700 --> 00:07:18.754 When I saw the image of Trayvon Martin on the news, 00:07:19.220 --> 00:07:22.120 so much of my own experience of fear, 00:07:22.629 --> 00:07:25.610 and the ways that I was being perceived out in the world, 00:07:25.610 --> 00:07:27.080 all came rushing to the surface-- 00:07:27.080 --> 00:07:29.411 things that I clearly had buried. 00:07:32.377 --> 00:07:35.964 As a young Brown kid growing up in Queens, 00:07:35.964 --> 00:07:40.378 I also started thinking about all the young brothers that I'd left behind. 00:07:41.522 --> 00:07:44.780 Then asking, "Well, why me?" 00:07:44.780 --> 00:07:47.590 Why was I the one that was able to make it out? 00:07:47.950 --> 00:07:50.210 To go to a good school, 00:07:50.210 --> 00:07:52.060 to pursue an MFA, 00:07:52.060 --> 00:07:54.330 to live according to my passion. 00:07:56.428 --> 00:07:58.580 It's taken me a long time to understand 00:07:58.580 --> 00:08:03.680 that I simply want more people in the world that look like me 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:06.250 to be able to move through the world with that kind of 00:08:07.080 --> 00:08:08.080 freedom. 00:08:08.652 --> 00:08:12.591 --Okay, what we're going to do is just walk. 00:08:14.117 --> 00:08:16.746 --Walk naturally. 00:08:18.166 --> 00:08:21.069 --Take up as much space as possible. 00:08:21.620 --> 00:08:24.110 --Walk your walk. 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.] 00:08:31.347 --> 00:08:38.189 [Youth charged with misdemeanor offenses and criminal possession of a weapon participate as alternative sentencing.] 00:08:39.264 --> 00:08:44.038 We move through what I started to describe as a visual storytelling curriculum. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:48.419 What we do is sculpt the scene of that story 00:08:48.419 --> 00:08:50.360 or of that memory. 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. 00:08:58.474 --> 00:09:04.031 They start to gather more meaning as to how that narrative is of an individual 00:09:04.031 --> 00:09:07.682 and not some preconceived notion of criminality. 00:09:08.127 --> 00:09:10.541 [MAN] --If he runs, we all got to run. 00:09:12.660 --> 00:09:16.380 I've had to really deal with the philosophical crisis 00:09:16.380 --> 00:09:20.760 of what it means to be enacting an art space program 00:09:20.760 --> 00:09:25.930 that I believe has freedom as its central value and goal, 00:09:25.930 --> 00:09:27.510 and yet, 00:09:27.510 --> 00:09:31.913 still operating in something that is really a criminal justice space. 00:09:35.748 --> 00:09:39.460 ["Mirror/Echo/Tilt," 2019 Collaboration with Melanie Crean and Sable Elyse Smith] 00:09:39.460 --> 00:09:41.630 The only thing that I've arrived at, 00:09:41.630 --> 00:09:44.330 which keeps me in the work, 00:09:44.330 --> 00:09:48.686 is the personal change that I can sense in these individuals-- 00:09:50.530 --> 00:09:54.421 in these young people that are the young people I grew up with. 00:09:57.685 --> 00:10:00.370 I always return to the same thing: 00:10:00.370 --> 00:10:04.690 the art is the very thing that has power in this space 00:10:04.690 --> 00:10:06.460 because it is unfixed. 00:10:07.117 --> 00:10:09.132 It cannot be defined. 00:10:13.900 --> 00:10:19.020 By being able to really exist in your own body 00:10:19.020 --> 00:10:24.894 and understand that you do not need to be defined by an experience-- 00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:27.865 in this case, arrest and incarceration-- 00:10:30.238 --> 00:10:35.941 it allows you to move forward with a little more sense of joy; 00:10:37.276 --> 00:10:40.605 what Ta-Nehisi Coates describes as "the beautiful struggle." 00:10:42.544 --> 00:10:45.260 It's by being in your full self 00:10:45.260 --> 00:10:47.483 and attempting to live, 00:10:47.907 --> 00:10:50.000 that can never be taken away. 00:10:51.170 --> 00:10:56.252 To get anyone to start imagining possibilities for themselves again, 00:10:57.163 --> 00:11:00.000 that is what we all should be after.