serving alcohol which is the. these are stories that you know what else might happen to a host of. questions. greetings and salutation as william shakespeare once wrote the buttes of greatness is when it just joins remorse from power one of the great duties of the artist today yesterday and tomorrow is to remind us of our remorse that we do not lose our greatness in our power artists whether on the stage or through the screen should always be the storytellers and historians of both a cultures trial and sorrow we have to celebrate our triumphs to remind us of what we've accomplished but we also must remember our sorrows to remind us of just how

far we have yet to go tony award winning broadway producer run simons is just that kind of storyteller in his fight to bring more diversity to the world of arts and entertainment we've seen one example of this battle over at mississippi within the industry play out on message boards and social media in recent years by putting the spotlight on hollywood from the oscars so white campaign to the white washing of films like casting joel edgerton and christian bale as ramses the second and moses these are just a few examples simons has put his money where his mouth is and his art where his heart is in his efforts to better diversify not just broadway but film and television as well in his award winning work which includes his production of jitney august wilson's ode to black working life in the one nine hundred seventy s. . so let's roll up our sleeves and continue the fight for equality and diversity as we give voice to the voiceless and keep watching the hawks.

to. get the. real thing. at the bottom. like you know that i got. this. week so. welcome everybody watching the harks i am tyrrel but and i'm having a while at the great white way broadway has always been a part place to fight diversity since most plays and musicals the make it there are centered on white people of a certain economic class however recently in the last decade we've seen more diverse productions or shows become resoundingly hits however despite these games it's still a very very white way on broadway tony award winning producer ron simons is working

to change that he joined us earlier and we started by asking him how do we expand upon those successes to bring more diversity to broadway and the arts. i think a couple different ways i think one of the things that i'm involved with with the broadway league is i sit on the diversity committee but i sit on the diversity committee of just about every organization of which i'm a member. and one of the things we're trying to tackle is trying to get more people of color to come into the theater so they are first they are the patrons because you know broadway is not a cheap endeavor and the cost of it makes it and she will for a good number of people particularly people of color so access is to theater is a big thing which is why many of us who really care about diversity we go outside the boundaries of broadway. and you know we might go to schools or we'll invite schools in or and look for sponsors to sponsor kids to come in and see

a show if you feel it's important enough the thing is that that's on an individual producer by producer basis so it's not an endeavor that the entire community is undertaking it's a one off based on what the particular producer of that show wants to do because that's his or her option to decide so access is one thing and trying to get rush tickets and so in that rush to get market so that you know people who have lower income can come in and see a show for twenty dollars a very limited number of seats of course hamilton has done that i'm sure you wear a number of shows have followed suit even before that as well and so then there's trying to get more people access to the theater and then about the folks who actually decide which are the producers who are the producers what goes on the stage that's another and i'm trying to crack because i feel that it's

a very important that the people who decide what you're going to see on stage should be representative of the people you know that you are serving and in the past i think it's been the white people doing what shows for white people so it's ok occasionally some shows of color but in this ever changing world people who like me want to change that model we want to see more people of color telling stories from under-represented communities which is what simon says which is why our motto is tell every story. and we want to make sure that that those ranks grow and i'm working on that for broadway for film moving into television hopefully i'll have you know a chance to have an impact there we'll see but. it's a difficult process particularly for broadway if we're going to stick with theater for a second because broadway producers. have to have access to either capital or people

who have capital yes so by and large that means white people because most african-americans you know americans you know asian americans we come from humble beginnings not that you know our our white colleagues don't but we don't typically have the same rolodex so if you're trying to raise three and a half million dollars or ten million dollars or twenty five million dollars and you try to go to people to invest four hundred thousand dollars here and seven hundred thousand dollars there well you can ask your on cousin and niece and nephew you have to have people who have high net worth and who have you know significant disposable incomes so part of my job as a producer of color is to increase my network on an ongoing basis to find not only people of color but anyone at all who cares about the kind of stories that we want to tell. and in addition i part of my feet to five times i try to do is i actually every year have a session for aspiring producers of color so there are people out there who want to

produce but they have no idea where to begin they don't have any connections so it's a sort of a primer and as my career grows i hope i'll be able to expand that as well so that we can have more people long recessions greater education networking possibilities so they can meet other folks of high net worth to get their shows made that's a really smart technique of doing that for you know the young producers out there and you know giving them those opportunities the are just not going to be available to them by a very very doesn't really do. a good move on your part it's interesting to me because absolutely and it's very interesting to me because this isn't an issue that strictly just a an american issue that you only see on broadway. foundation put out a study last year on diversity in british theatre whether himself has said the industry is still as he puts it hideously weiss that's from andrew lloyd webber so you've got to stop and think what he said in the study is that if the situation

continues there's a real danger that not only will black and asian young people stay away from theatre as a profession they will stay away as customers and without them in the audience theatres will become unsustainable as they are forced to compete for a dwindling aging white middle class audience and the broadway league reported that in the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen season seventy seven percent of ticket buyers were white. that's right. and in particular you know as a producer on broadway you have to take care of and acknowledge a very key demographic which are particularly white women between the ages of forty five and sixty five because they make up a large block of ticket buyers and for you to succeed on broadway before you become a brand like week you like hamilton you know all the other brands you have to have the early theater goers who go to theater a lot to come in to sustain you until you can have the momentum in the marketing machine moves to get you know people from visiting side from other cities or what

have you to come to new york and say i want to see your show yeah i heard about it or heard about the jitney or whatever this thing is so yeah it's an ongoing challenge to to diversify audiences and i got to tell you what you said is absolutely true about it not being just an american issue i was in germany shooting the documentary and i was working with a number of afro german performers and actors there and they are where we were in one thousand. sixty which is to say that there are national theatres theaters who get money from the government will not hire black people or people of color and less of that work particularly of classics calls for a person of color. because they feel that audiences this is the one artistic director said audiences won't accept a black person playing a role in shakespeare unless it's off you know i want to see the three of that's

been going on first so long and i feel like especially with classics like shakespeare it's always that well and there's always a fellow and it's just it's heartbreaking it's like twenty years later after theatre school still hearing this the same kind of rhetoric is always very strange because truthfully some of the best shakespeare i've ever seen was done outside of sort of this idea what it's supposed to be i always say one of the best shakespearean i ever saw was a south african theater group putting it in modern day south africa and to me about the celebration of theater and what it does i want to salute i want to this is i think it was all but you know. one of the reasons we don't have a lot of great art today is because it's too expensive to be a starving artist. especially in new york especially if you're a theater actor out there given the you know the cost of living and things like that how much does that kind of outside barriers whether be you know political economical you know how much does that play

a role in the creation of art today especially in the creation of diverse or supposedly of going into our lives you know you hope is going to speak to people you know to your classes and cultures that are being you know systematically looked over or challenged by the system. well i think that is the creation of our is not the challenge because anyone with a pen and paper or a computer can write a play it's getting that work seen which is a challenge and if i had what you were asking about is the very reason. why i became a producer because i'm an actor as well as a producer and when i got to new york i was just acting and so i met a lot of playwrights of color amazing gifted folks like dominic maurice and marcus gardley and radha blanca the list goes on and on and on and lynn nottage kotori hall and many of them were getting their work done in reading hell so they would have a twenty nine hour reading then they would have another reading then they would have

a workshop and then they would have another workshop and then and they were getting main stage they were actually moved into production and the things that i saw at the time that were getting greenlit and were on stage. there were some good things but there was a lot of stuff that i wouldn't have even bothered to put my time into meanwhile these incredibly gifted artists are not getting produced so i decided that because of that i'm going to become a producer not have any idea what they do but i'm going from a comic producer so that i can help those kinds of stories being told but more to your point in terms of. actors in particular since that's the example you used it's tough in new york it's tough everywhere but because you know the county cost of living is so high here and there are so many actors and the competition is really fierce and what people often outside of the business don't appreciate is that there are a lot of actors but more importantly every year there's

a whole new crop of actors that hit the scene and they're fresher faced in the last years and they're younger than the two year before and so it's an ongoing change and i remember when i graduated and came to new york to become an actor people told me you know when you look forty or fifty years old are you going to work all the time. i might well geez face yeah i guess you know but a lot of people you know i have to say i know a bunch of friends who you know they worked at it for years and then they got to a certain age where they wanted to buy a house or they wanted to you know have kids and that's very challenging to do even with a working actor salary you know i mean you can't have a middle of a real class or certainly middle middle class life in new york city with the kind of money that broadway pays so it's an ongoing challenge in a lot of people around my age you start to see them leaving the business because now they start to go and do something whether it's education or whether you know

it's going into mainstream business and and because it's all about the economics really i take i definitely i thank you for the good work you're doing because you know to me that you know one of the great things about our is that our allows us to not only you know celebrate our great triumphs but it also allows us to remember and learn from our great sorrows and when new communities that are being under represented in the artistic world then we're not paying attention to their celebrations or their sorrows and i really take my hat off to you for standing up and doing that thank you very much sir for the work that you're doing here. thank you i appreciate it thanks guys. as we're going to court watchers don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics we cover the facebook and twitter see our poll shows dot com coming up we preview show on the storm's interview with anita baker executive director of the metro atlanta task force for the homeless and she will talk about the u.s. government's war against the all states who want.

all the world to stay and all the news companies merely players but what kind of partners are into american play r.t. america offers more r.t. america first. many ways to use the landscape just like the real news big new good actors bad actors and in the end you could never you're on. so much parking all the world all the world all the world's a stage we are definitely a. gentrification

is one of the most polarizing issues of modern urban life we often hear sarcastic moans about the sounds and smells of real life being edged out by the smell of eight dollar cabbage you know concoctions and longtime locals being priced out by rooftop partying froze a butt in atlanta georgia the issue is all too real for thousands of downtown homeless who rely on the one hundred thousand square foot peach tree pine shelter which apparently has no place in the modern glossy atlanta and vision by really. state developers and local politicians not everyone is upset that since as curbed atlanta reports the closure will likely be a boon to luxury leasing office is that have been popping up in the neighborhood and clearly peachtree pine street isn't unique slate magazine just weeks ago a report on how the case is emblematic of the nationwide battle between the forces of gentrification and the homeless for some insight on the pro long legal battle

over peach tree pine watching the hawks on stone sat down with executive director anita beatty here's a preview of their discussion. i mean it takes two and a half three maybe minimum wage jobs to afford housing just hood's fair fair housing cost which is based on. fair or not not area median income but fair market rent so we know what those costs are you have to the average two bedroom apartment in atlantic you'd have to earn eighty nine thousand dollars an hour to be able to afford it if as hood says you don't pay more than thirty percent of your income. so there's not that opportunity so people get stuck in shelters and now the city is saying no more shelters the policy is no more shelters because they don't want homeless people you know loose walking around and be invisible. but i don't know how that's going to

work because it's really as we discussed i mean the point is unless you throw them in jails if you don't have to prove any shelters for them you know they were they going to go. well we are afraid they will put them in jail except if they're under some court orders now to keep the jails. at a balanced census they've always been a crowd it but what we know is people are you know the city has often used this threat of arrest or real. cyclical arrests to deter people from being home with imports imus's though if we're to threaten you now for a rest you know if you go somewhere else to be poor and homeless not here so it doesn't make any sense and for me selfish as i am having worked with the people i loved so much for thirty two years i know this is just it's absolutely ridiculous

to make policies based on class race economic status gender choices that sort of thing it's ridiculous we have relationships and it's in those relationships that you see the the beauty of the humanity and the willingness to do whatever it takes to help run this community and that's what will be missing i think. and that breaks my heart. it's the end of the week orc watchers which means of time for our weekly preview of our to use hit comedy news show redacted tonight . if you've watched the hawks but still are back to your to and i think you had better pay close attention to our following ghosts will be hawking their nights of reduction which will and should inspire you to start sorry but i can't say that on television because well it's we're back to debate joining us to preview this week's latest episode over our tos we're back to tonight are naomi girl bonnie and not only would thank you all for coming i was saying you know i don't think. so naomi i

understand. there's been a lot more news about rikers island finally being closed and most people think that that's a pretty great thing pretty infamous prison but you thought there might be some blowback in store if the prison closes. that's not exactly what i covered actually the plan to close it is mayor de blasio recently announced that it's going to take ten years to close and it seems less like plan to close it more like we just hope. problems will resolve themselves and rancorous will just mature on its own you know what i think it's big brother roosevelt island you know i'm just following his footsteps so yes the abuse of riker's is very well known guards have been convicted by the d.o.j. for beating inmates with excessive force there's been you know even

kind of force there i mean the supporting players yeah. i don't know really some end up doing a little bit of really really and truly. i think. so. so activists are really angry at the blahs here who's been kind of the champion know a lot of progressive reforms in new york but this one. he seems to be tiptoeing back on and the plan is just relying on so many. so many other people really drastic reforms to have been with the criminal justice system and people are losing their patience because plenty of people's lives are ruined when they stay at rikers you've heard of browder who stayed for three years without a trial for stealing a backpack and later took his own life after two years of coming back from rikers so it breaks a lot of people there's a lot of people in solitary confinement and it's just going to corrupt out of date

institution that needs to go. and i did bring a clip so i'll stop talking about you when i go to. like this you're the d.o.j. charged right person island guard with beating me and stabbings and slashings are still on the rise despite millions of dollars spent on these conditions are so brutal that after an eight month stay at rikers lil wayne. wrote a book in gone so much that he said even considered converting to christianity while in rikers and started to think maybe i don't need some big movie to be created right very little wayne spirit. in. this book is terrifying we need to shut this place down immediately another famous and me go for different reasons coolies browder was arrested for allegedly stealing

a backpack at the age of sixteen and spent three years at rikers the majority in solitary confinement with no conviction. three years. wait wait wait what was in the backpack besides house keys was it a logger approved go pro what was it the kid carrying the backpack and in danger of drought a million air. wait wait wasn't this detail plot to get kennedy to make out with castro with a mouthful of l.s.d. . i like this mouthful of a like we did you. so. sometimes they're. here this week your fearless host. is planning to kind of go eyeball to eyeball. with. the probably go as well as yes oh yeah so this week he talks about cia director. he did this

at the aspen security forum which is like the summit on national security and so lovely to be asked from sydney. to go skiing afterwards. so yes it's a q. and a in which everything he said about the agency was pretty much a direct contradiction. history and one of his quotes during this event by verb begum was if there is one thing that we're very good at it's making sure we understand the breadth and scope of what we're actually lawfully permitted to do. you know except all the time that they were instrumental in. the removal leaders from several countries in which so many of them for important that we like and what we're we're really going to. have it for you know the way it. works legal. you know we're stuck with them yeah exactly

finally if i ask you guys real quick if you're worried about you know big big pharma big money are going to come crashing down on you for working next to. be going after now he's going after jeff bezos yeah i'm kind of. like an amazon like in my apartment like i'm like i mean i'm sort of. you know. it works that is very sneaky. if the letter starts asking about your friend. john this week he talks about the washington post new social media policy which basically says reporters can't say anything out of turn about the paper's corporate advertisers yeah no surprise that you know it's all right. there and you're right. you know what kind of makes this worse is that amazon has six hundred dollars six hundred million dollars contract with the cia for to treat like cloud

encryption services for them so by extension they can't report about the cia data right. very hard for them before i go to go say thank you so much because they barely reported it to any thank you very much for the you know that would go way over here of all the great work of the director to look at all right bill frist were directed tonight which airs every friday an hour to your america. which preachers exclusive interviews and parables every thursday once again to your. literary legend ray bradbury one said we are an m possibility in possible universe the scientists at northwestern university's center for interdisciplinary exploration and research in astrophysics have discovered that we are even more impossible than we thought the preeminent that allows this year's super computer driven simulations to see where the mass of the milky way came from previously we thought that after the big bang atom just come together and recycle themselves

within the galaxy being formed but it turns out it's actually much more likely that explosions of supernova spit out massive heaps of gas which is then shot out into space where powerful galactic winds carry them to distant galaxy is in fact it turns out nearly half of the atoms in our solar system are from other galaxies danielle. because our lead. the study said given how much of the matter out of which we formed it may have come from other galaxies we could consider ourselves space travelers or extragalactic immigrants. were really in your early years i will be have a way of look it was great to the good days and yeah i like it we're strangers in a strange land here that is ours are over today remember everyone in this world we're not told what real love develops so i tell you all i love you i am tyrrel winter and i'm topical people and watching those hawks out there have

a great day. that's a very rough terrain you saw it's rough climates and you have to fight to be able to them. it was gunshot on top of them and so many friends they would have been in the end i've been and you can not tell. me anything. you know i don't when you see a better body in the triangle in the digital budgets read in the good. old to me but wouldn't. you don't think about these these soldiers on no you just

like and you know in other patients. larry you're watching our t.v. amount per student more. here's what people have been saying about jack to the night was he was actually just full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to launch you know a lot of the really packs a punch at least yampa is the john oliver of hearty americans do the same we are apparently better than food to see people you've never heard of love back to the night my president of the world bank so they. really. seriously send us an e-mail.