Kaneza Schaal testifies on immigrant queer artists and smallest organizations

Dear Speaker Williams, my name is Kang Mehtia Nuat.

I am a Thai queer immigrant theater artist.

Sawadee Ka.

And I'm an executive director of Thai Theater Foundation, also the member of the Artistic Collective at National Queer Theater.

My relationship with National Queer Theater began when I directed a play called What You Are to Me as part of the Criminal Queerness Festival.

It was one of my first directing gigs in New York City, and it changed the way I understand my place here as both queer artists and immigrant artists.

I grew up in Thailand where censorship in art is real.

So directing a work that explored queer censorship felt deeply personal to me.

As a queer immigrant artist, we often carry those experiences with questioning whether this piece

is too political, too queer, too cultural specific, or too simple, or even too difficult for someone to hear that.

But working with National Queer Theater taught me that those stories do not have to remain untold.

And they have a space and the audience.

New York City have given me artistic freedom.

Just importantly, New York City has given me a friend.

So that might sound funny and something to tell the city council, but I mean it seriously.

For all...

Friendship becomes community, community becomes collaboration, and someone invites you to a project and you introduce them to someone else and then they form a project together.

And that network is often what keeps us growing when this career feels impossible.

But community alone cannot pay the bills.

Today, I run a nonprofit called High Theater Foundation, when even with public support, creating sustainable opportunity for artists is still difficult.

So I echo Adam's recommendation, and I would like to add tiny things.

Please make sure the city arts funding reach the smallest organization and the most vulnerable artists, especially queer artists who works exist in intersection of immigration, race, culture, and identity.

Queer art should not have to survive only because individual organizations fight to make a room for it.

We are not the risk to fund.

We are the part that make the city the cultural capital of the world.

Thank you.