ZAPI Artists BYTEZ — AAPI Heritage Month — EP. 3 with Samantha Ozeas
Transcription
jay: Hi. So, could you please introduce yourself with your name, pronouns and any identifiers or hyphenates you use?
sam: Yeah. Uh, my name is Samantha Ozeas. I’m a Chinese-American theater-maker, student, artist. Uh, she/her human.
jay: Love that. How do you define your race and ethnicity, and what does it mean to you?
sam: I was thinking about this question before, and I feel like the best way for me to describe it is by the way that my relationship to my race has changed throughout my life and my development in the different places that I’ve lived. Uh, when I, uh, grew up in my neighborhood for elementary school and middle school, I was in a large Korean community and being biracial and not part of the main culture of the community that I was in, I found myself kind of considering and viewing, perceiving myself as white until I went to high school in downtown LA and was a part of a very small theater community in which I was one of the only Asian people, uh, represented. So I found myself kind of being thrown into the role of like spokesperson and advocate in a way I hadn’t been exposed to before. Um, And that kind of early young adult reckoning, uh, continued on when I went to a, uh, mostly white community- studied in a mostly white community at Emerson College in Boston. And then again, when I, uh, arrived at the school that I’m studying at now, CMU, in which it is noticeably more diverse, but also… it’s a community made up of a lot of different cultures and communities from around the country, which means that our collective upbringings about how we discuss race or have interact different people of different cultures is very different. And it’s a whole other, uh, learning curve there as well.
jay: Interesting. So, with this learning curve for yourself, and it ties into, you know, you being an artist, a theater maker, all that, um, at a predominantly white institution, or- you know. How do you envision a re-imagined arts and entertainment industry?
sam: Yeah. I feel like a re-imagined arts industry to me means a community in which there is more diversity behind the table, enough so that artists are being viewed as their- for their accomplishments and for their potential, rather than somebody trying to check a box for diversity or somebody trying to perceive a certain way to the public. Um, I, that’s a discussion that I had with my friends, a lot of feeling kind of devalued when we get the sense that some people aren’t fully acknowledging us for all of the, uh, you know, support or brilliance or artistic so-and-so that we can bring to the table, but, uh, are rather reduced to, you know, a box to check. And then, uh, not much more perceiving is done beyond that. You know, you can definitely feel the ruse when it’s up. And I think that a re-imagined arts industry is a world without that.
jay: So, what is your role in this re-imagination? And you can talk generally, or what your work is through ZAPI Artists.
sam: Yeah, definitely. So, uh, I am studying directing, uh, at the institution that I’m with right now. And a lot of the tenants that I bring into the room for directing, you know, kind of general goals for care or goals for always investigating ourselves and never coming to conclusions. You know, absolutes, never drawing black and white lines, um, comes into my work with ZAPI. Uh, I’ve found a lot of my work, uh, with ZAPI specifically has to do with examining roles of artists in larger rooms, in larger discussions, but in the same way that, uh, as a director and playwright, I never feel like there are absolutes or, um, hard lines to be drawn. I try to take that consideration and open-mindedness into my work.
jay: Amazing. So you’ve talked about what you’re doing through ZAPI, but I want to ask. Why did you want to get involved? And you were talking about it reimagining too, and I guess you have stakes, but if you want to elaborate further.
sam: Yeah, sure. I first heard of ZAPI when, uh, uh, Cindy began to start, you know, sharing all of her work. We grew up around the same area in LA and I’d kind of known about her in periphery, you know, growing up. And then we went to school for a year together in Boston. So I found myself reading [ZAPI’s] content from the beginning and a lot of the questions that they were posing were questions that I was taking time to, uh, consider myself and with peers around me and I’ve found, I- I went in hoping that the time that I would be able to dedicate towards this org would be time for, you know, my personal growth and growth that I can hopefully, uh, take with me into this re-imagined arts community, uh, and discussions that I can take into this re-imagined arts community. Um, and that is definitely what I’ve found in the last however many months it’s been working with all of you lovely people.
jay: So, then, let’s go back to you as a person. Um, can you share what matters to you?
sam: Yeah, I’d say some key tenants of, you know, what, I guess my, my morality is driven by things that are important to me, community, honesty, and putting individuals and myself over work and over product, um, which is kind of the difficult one. The one that I am trying to key into at the moment, the one that I am actively making an attempt to switch my mindset for that. So that work does not become overbearing.
jay: Could you talk a little bit more about that, how you keep yourself grounded in all the work that you do?
sam: Yeah, for sure. I find that having more real life discussions, you know, more face to face interactions and contemplations over a lot of say the, um, topics that we’re talking about or writing through with ZAPI. Having those conversations in person and understanding that there’s a lot more nuance than words on a page or words that you read, you know, on the internet, taking that nuance and applying it to face-to-face conversations is helpful. And reminds me that as I was saying earlier, you know, there are no absolute answers and there are no- there’s never going to be a point in which we work hard enough. And then we reach the goal and we solve XYZ problem that we’re trying to open up and interrogate in the world. You know, it’s always going to be evolving conversations, and having those in person helps me ground that a little bit more.
