good moewing. this is 4 your sunday". hello. i'm pat lawson muse. last christmas dray was a nightmare for one of the city's jewels in the theater andrts community. thieves broke into the anna costia play house and stole omputers, cards and cash a damaged the building, but they did not break the spirits of those who workedo hard to make the play house succeed and help transformhe community. joining us today is raymond caldwell and billy isor an a with the theater alliance. welcome, both of you. you are back in action at the

quickly e much more than many thought. , the play break- house started a go fund me page nd the community and your patrons ran to your help. tell us how you do. >> indeed. r community really responded. they saw a moment of loss for us and they recognized the work that we're dog, and so they showed up to the go fund me campaign that wasstarted. tually was able to replace a lot of material that was lost. >> yeah. raising even more than you anticipated. >> yeah. the goal was $20,000, and i think that we spassed that and we want to recognize that we are one of two organizations. the play house and theater alliance. we're the resident company. but it's great to see our community showed up and responded to this moment. >> you arehe new producing artistic director. you've been there with the theater alliance fore. some t tell us about your history. >> i started as thessociate

artistic director. before that i came in producing a festival, then artistic director. collin really appreciated the wo i was doing, wanted to bring me in a his assistant. i slowlye bec an associate. he was stepping down and the company launched a search and in that search i of course applied and bec yamoue'r director at howard university, a full-time l full-time lecturer. you've been to india. was that to direct a play?>> i am doing work around gender based violence t and hcreate constructive conversations around violence in nieeighborhos and communities. >> you're doing a lot. >> i am. but -- tty excitinge p >> it is and i tell everyone i love what i'm doing. it's my passion. because it's my passion, i want to do it all and i want to serv all ofit. it's about community and

building community. >> and theater alliance h been much a part of the community for the better par of 17 years or so. billy, you are t currently lead in the current production being put on by theatere allia at the place house. "blood at the root". yes. >> tell us about your root. >> it's such a beautifully, beautiful play. one of the things that makes it to so intense is it tackles subjects that are very much in the air but very seldom discussed bike identities and w we identify as individuals and how we identify with people who look like us. for example, race o sexuality or classism and how we can exist asn individuals wit those categories and that just because we identify in those categories is one thing. it doesn't mean we're all the same and that's okay and it's

ay to have conversations and gain clarity and have misunderstandings and recuperate from those sunderstandings. >> you are an accomplished actress. you've appeared in productions around the area and last year you were nominated for a helen hayes ard. that's huge. >> it is. i'm so grateful. i've had such a b here in the city and i'm from here and have been able to come back and collaborate with people and create beautiful art and the amount of amazing to exist with fellow artists is astonishing. the fact that i've been up for this beautiful thing is beyond words. >> congratulations to you. >> thank you. >> i want to ask you about the impact that the anacostia play house has had. you moved into a neighborhood that many other theater companies would have shunned, certainly would not have considered. >> i think that serving communities is incredibly

important. what theater alliance wanted to do is it wants to serve aha community often times f esn't receive this type attention, particularly in the arts. spac isn't often created in the arts, particularly in ward 8. i think the idea of creating space for individuals, figuring out what are the barriers to entrance totheater, and i think that if we think about what theater is, it's our last cultural template. it's the place where we go to apple with real life issues. we come to share those issues with one another purposely in person. and so creating that space is incredibly important, figuring out what are the barriers to entran o, what's stopping community from attending the theater and how do we as a company remove those barriers. it's so veryimportant. all right. we're going it continue our talk with the theater alliance right after this break. stay with us.

welcome back . we're talking with the theater alliance at the anacostia playhouse. they've got fine stuff goin. "blood at the root", billie, you're playing theead. i have a brother and best friend who is untraditional to y the least. it is diverse in a traditional sense. in order for that to truly economy to full picture, you have to come see the picture to see exaly what mean by, that but the beautiful thing about it is we are also diverse as humans, the cast p thatys these characters, and what that brings to the table is an interesting dynamic in the rehearsal room. we're all learning each time another aets on stage, each time we're having conversations, it really is a

beautiful gup of different people and artists. >> how did you get into acting? >> i'veolways been i the arts, period. i've kind of cycled through them, but i went to the wellington school of the arts when i was a phomore. that was the start of this journey not only to finding theater, but also finding out more about w i was and the things that i want to delve into and becoming more bold and . unapologet >> duke ellington is the start of many great things in city. raymond, you are directing and you've got quite a fuel scheduled for the rest of the season. tell us about that. >> we . we are in the run of "blood of the root" and after that we end our season 16 with a really beautiful piece called "flight of nestra". so lady dane who has written it is resetting that myt in the

graveyard of black arts. so it's a really beautiful exploration of the black trans narrative through the lens. >> an ec? >> an epic slam poem. what we do at theater a is we're constantly asking ourselves what is theater and how do we shift it, changeit, introduce new ideas? we've done really interesting work like work becomes flesh which really centers hipho hip hop theater, and this idea of poetry and slam poetry and i thin >> how has it transitioned down through the years? yo were on "h" street before you joined -- you moved yr alliance to the playhouse in anacostia. on "h" stree you did lot of the same kind of work that you're doing in that community, you're doing theame thing i the anacostia community. >> yeah. i think that as we moved into anacostiand ward 8, we really

centered our mission. the focus of our mission is to present work that explores nd sol conscious ideas the idea of what is happening in society and how do we make space for conversation and not argument. i think it's very easy to take sides, but what we don't want to do is we don want t create work that forces people to take sides. instead we want to create work that provokes thought, that pr aokes conversation then ultimately that conversation in our tangible action community. >> you do it with a relatively small staff. >> we do. we have -- imrtistic director and the only full-time staff member, but i will say that i have team of four of ate most brilliant women in the washington, d.c. t scene that i will always cow you thto . >> washington has such a unique theater and arts scene. for someone who wants to do what you both are doing, what's you

advice? what's your advice for a budding director? >> i would sayow t your hat into places where you don't think that you should be. go and explore places. go and explore work tha you don't know much about. because i think ultimately what it's about is aut learning. particularly when you're very young. so what's great is that the d.c. massive,scene, which is is also so supportive and loving. so if you're a young director and youee work thatou're very interested in, go to that company and ask them to assist and direct. ask them to sit in on the process. >> make room for yourself.t billie, wuld you sai? >> don't limit yourself. in this world there's people trying to do that for you. there's no reason to do that to yourself. jump in and take a risk. at the end of theay you're in the same place you started. there are plenty of great opportunities for facebookven to audition. just get started. it's better to do something than nothing at l.

>> very quickly, for those who wa to catch "blood at the root" how long is it on stage? >> it runs until march 24th at the anacostia playhouse. >> thanks so much for shnding time ws. good luck to you both. coming up next, what you can learn from dna'l testing. be right back. g people aren't talk abouts fresh grab and go salads and sandwiches. they're not talking, because they're eating. oh, hello. at giant, it's the little things that make mealtime easy, so you have more time with the people you love.

the pasteek on news 4 at 5:00 you saw a serie of reports at dna testing and how it can reveal information about your ou health, heritage, your long lost and unknown relatives among other things. righal now we want to about a very unique dna test that can tell afric-americans not only the country in africa from which their ancestors came, but the specific ethnic group or tribe. joining me now is gina paige who is co-founder of african an

stry, inc. wa welcome, gina. in order to do this dna testing, you suggest answering the most important que are you looking for? why do you want your genes tested >> exactly. as you said in the intro, people are looking for different kinds of information. they may be looking for relatives. they may be looking for health traits or specific heritage answers. so the question will determine which company's test you use. >> which bngs us to your company. how and why did you start >> well, we started our company 16 years ago, so before any of sthe o you see advertised on television, there was a d.c. based company doing this work. we started the company because for african-americans particularly, we are the original victims of identity theft, pat. dwe can all the genealogy we want to, but we lost s much when we were disconnected from

the continent 400 years ago. we lost our name, our lauages, our families were torn apart. there are no records that can tell us where is my family from before virginia. o or alabama haiti or jamaica. we decided to use dna to help transform the way we view ourselves and our histor >> andow does your genetic testing differ fthm the other, commercial dna testing companies? >> an african ancestry test differs. we have the largest database of africanlin yaeage with over 33,0 samples in our database. when we compare a person's dna to dna from africa, we can get very specific about a tribe ethnic group and a country. our colleagues in the industry can only tell you that you're some percentage west african from some regiota but their

ses have fewer than ,000 sample >> most african-americans would be fromafest ca. >> absolutely. we know that answer without a dna test. >> do you trace both maternal and paternal lineage? >> we do and that's what's exciting about the test we offer. we have one test where tells you where your mother mother mother's people arewe from. lso have a test that can look at your father's father's father's people. we're getting very specific answers you can share with the entire family li. >> unlike one of the other companies, when you swabbed my check, you're getting information about my mother and my grandmother, not just my s siblings. >> when we swab your check, exactly, the results we get will be shared by your mother, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, your grandmother.

wi the othertests, the results will only be shared by your siblings. >> many african-americans have a mixed heritage that includes nonafrican countries. does the african ancestry test include nonaican information? do you give me some indication whether there's somethi else there other than african genes? >> our test does not look at percentages. perctages look at your entire genetic family tree and then break it down into cegories. we look at one branch of the family tree and get very specific. int to your we don't know where that branch is going to end up. if it's african, we give youop e and the place. if it's not african, we'll tell you it's native american or european or middle eastern. >> you'll be able to see that. >> yes. >> and then would you suggest

that doing another test companion test with another company that doesearch that specific information, if you want that? >> yes. if you want to know all of the ancestry that make up who you are, then you nee t toe a competitor test and those are called add mture tests. >> okay. it gets back to the original question which is what do you w reallyt? >> exactly. and we know the average black person is 75% african, 25% european. >> we're talking aboute gina pand we'll be right back. stay with us.

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we're talking with gina paige of african ancestry, inc. gina, you've don the test for many notable people. who are some of them? >> starting here in the nbc 4 family, we've traced the

maternal ancestry of barbara harrison we found her people. that means that her mother mother's mother at some point in the past 500 years was in guinea. and then with leon harris, we traced his to three groups in camaroon. >> interesting. if they were to back, they would look for those tribes to go to those coastal areas, those areas? >> exactly. >> and look for other relatives. how long does itet take to the results? we're talking about, again, a swab of the cheek. is that the way the test is done? >> it is. it's a simple cheek swab. the results take about eight to receive thece we swab. >> how much does it cost? >> the test is normally $299. it's like theil perfect f gift, because once you do it, you go to the family reunibe and the hit.

half the people at the reunion are going to share those se results. >> they'll have lots of questions for you. how many tests have you done overall? you said you co-founded it, african ancestry inc. 16 years ago? >> 16 years ago last week. we've impacted the lives of over 750,000 people, pat. it's been an amazing journey. >> there is a lot of controvers as you know, as we alluded to regarding our series on dna. there are concerns about privacy and what happens to all of that data that gets collected by companies like yours and ancestry.com. once we get our answers, what happens to all of our genetic data, that library ofn informat you get? >> at african ancestr our lab destroys all the genetic information once the result is determined. we oy sequence a very minute portion of the dna, so we look

at much less dna than our competitors. moreover, we don't sell, share, or research our customer's genetic information an thaet's because we are a black-owned company and we understand the sensitivities of our customers who look like us. >> if people are concerned about it and may want to do their genealogy or to find out wherein africa their ancestors came from, but they're worried about that? >> well, i would encourage them to rea t ourms and conditions, but the other thing that some people do, and it's quite clever, they don't use their name. when they submit their dna sample, they put a fake name on the form. theyig put mr. x. they might put customer 123. so even if you people who handle your genetic information also handle your personal information, they wouldn't know who you are. >> but obviously you needo collectth o personal information. >> no. >> you don't?

>> no. >> so all i need to do is give you aswotton ? >> yeah. >> andn dress to sn tend the results? >> exactly. we'd like a ne to putn the certificate and the letter, but we don't have to do that. >> so you d't need a lot of other personal information? >> no. none. interesting. i think i would like to do it. i've never done. but oi've always wondered. you have conversations with the family, dad, mom, where did we come from, where does the family say that both started. of course it can be very difficult for african-americans. gina paige of african anses tce inc. >> thank you very having us. we'd love to help you find out where you're from. >> i look forward to the results. go to n washington.com and click on community. i'm pat lawson muse. we'll see you next week.

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