00:00Mandy, thank you so much for being here tonight.
00:02Tell me, what does it mean to you to be honored tonight in the Gen X Awards?
00:06It's kind of incredible, actually.
00:08You don't really, I mean, you kind of just go through your life, living your life.
00:12And then all of a sudden, someone's like, you have this award.
00:13And you're like, for what?
00:14What did I do?
00:16And they're like, just by doing what, you put out the work that you wanted to put out.
00:23You put out things that speak to your heart.
00:24You try to speak, there's so much going on in the world, especially now.
00:28It's like, you just try to be honest about where you're at, what you're trying to do,
00:33the work that you're trying to put out there.
00:34Just to have people react and respond to it in a way that it feels special.
00:38It's kind of, it's just an honor, you know?
00:40I mean, doing what you love, you-
00:42I know.
00:43I mean, that's amazing, right?
00:44Yes.
00:45It's incredible.
00:46It's a great gift.
00:47And so one of the kind of major talks of the art community this year was St. Joan.
00:53And you were lucky enough to be in that.
00:56Tell me about the message and why it was so important right now for that to hit the stage.
01:02I think it was so resonant with people because the fact that it was this young teenage girl,
01:07essentially, who was kind of stepping into a world of men.
01:11And in this production, especially, it was a world of white men as a woman of color in
01:14the show.
01:15And she was not afraid.
01:17You know?
01:18She was there to make her presence known, to make her mission known.
01:22She wasn't afraid to, she wasn't backing down to anybody.
01:24She was there.
01:25She was in your face.
01:26She was front-footed.
01:27You know?
01:28In the face of adversity.
01:29In the face of trial.
01:30And she wasn't, she didn't really care.
01:32Yeah.
01:33She was like, I'm here on a mission.
01:34God told me to do this.
01:35And you need to, like, get on board or get out of my way.
01:36And I think, I think that the passion of that and the drive of that, especially coming
01:40from a woman and a woman of color in this story was very, resonant with a lot of people.
01:45So.
01:46Well, and so tell me, what's next for you?
01:48What are you working on?
01:49What are you doing?
01:50Lots of auditions.
01:51I'm flying to L.A. next week to test for a show.
01:53I have a show coming up in the winter.
01:57So lots of things are happening, which is, it's wonderful, but it's like you're spinning
02:01all these plates and it's good.
02:03It's good.
02:04It's very good.
02:05So tell me, what is a platform that you, or, yeah, just something, you know, in our political
02:13climate or day-to-day that's inspiring you right now or that you want to kind of jump
02:18on and, you know, promote or, you know, work on?
02:22One?
02:23There's, okay, there's just, there's a lot happening in the world.
02:28So politically there's a lot of things that are of interest to me.
02:31I think now one of my favorite groups to follow is the Innocence Project and they work with
02:36incarcerated populations and trying to get vacated, I'm sorry.
02:43Yeah, no, incarcerated people.
02:45Yeah.
02:46Well, they try, a lot of, there are lots of innocent people who are in prison and they
02:49work to get them out, they work to get them representation, they work to get them lawyers,
02:52they work to get them resources and work to get them towards the generation.
02:55So I think that's really interesting and really exciting that that's what's happening.
02:59There's a lot of youth groups who are working to register young people to vote, which is
03:04very exciting.
03:05Especially in the New York, there's lots of organizations that are food pantries for homeless
03:08populations.
03:09I think that's really exciting, not exciting, but good work to be doing, necessary work to
03:13be doing.
03:14There's actually a couple of groups who are working, it's like a break-off of Girls Who Code,
03:18but like Black Girls Who Code especially.
03:20So they're working with young adolescent populations, mostly in communities of color to teach them how to code,
03:26which I think is really exciting.
03:28Especially since I was not a computer literate person growing up at all.
03:31So I think those types of organizations are really exciting work that they're doing.
03:36Thank you so much.
03:37Thank you for being here to be honored tonight.
03:39You are so deserving of this, especially for all the work that you're doing on and off the stage.
03:44So thank you very much.
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