converted part of a defunct brewery that closed over 20 years ago into no studios, an artist collective that takes people s dreams of show business and shows how they can be a reality. i just remember as a kid, you know, to be a young black guy in milwaukee thinking about, well, i want to be a writer. i want to be an artist, i want to work in film, and it just seemed like a million miles away. and then, you know, 30 years later, to actually accomplish those things and realize that there are other young kids, you know, black, hispanic, asian, gay, straight, queer, whatever, who are feeling that same thing. there are people who could actually do the things that they love, but do it from milwaukee. do it from milwaukee without having to, oh, i have a little bit of talent. i better get out of here as quickly as possible. what if we were to embrace all of that talent instead of systematically suppressing it? you know, we grew up in mequon. it s a suburb of milwaukee, not exactly in
with the 1983, i lost being a sinhalese and a buddhist. because the sinhalese and buddhists could do this kind of this much of violence to some innocent people. so clearly in your work, you ve been very much a loud critic of state violence, as you put it, against the tamil community and it s led perhaps to a growing isolation for you from your own sinhalese community. i mean, has it given you a kind of crisis of identity? yes, it is. it is. like, you know, but you see, what we did was then we made up a collective of artists. we kind of buttressed ourselves in this artist collective called theertha, which lalith manage, that you referred to, was part of it. so we made our own world, you know, to deal with this. and lalith manage says
so clearly in your work, you ve been very much a loud critic of state violence, as you put it, against the tamil community and it s led perhaps to a growing isolation for you from your own sinhalese community. i mean, has it given you a kind of crisis of identity? yes, it is. it is. like, you know, but you see, what we did was then we made up a collective of artists. we kind of buttressed ourselves in this artist collective called theertha, which lalith manage, that you referred to, was part of it. so we made our own world, you know, to deal with this. and lalith manage says about the arts collective that you, and i quote, wanted to drive home the point that the political and the religious connection is problematic and undesirable to the nation. yes.
a sinhalese and a buddhist. because the sinhalese and buddhists could do this kind of this much of violence to some innocent people. so clearly in your work, you ve been very much a loud critic of state violence, as you put it, against the tamil community and it s led perhaps to a growing isolation for you from your own sinhalese community. i mean, has it given you a kind of crisis of identity? yes, it is. it is. like, you know, but you see, what we did was then we made up a collective of artists. we kind of buttressed ourselves in this artist collective called theertha, which lalith manage, that you referred to, was part of it. so we made our own world, you know, to deal with this. and lalith manage says about the arts collective that you, and i quote, wanted to drive home the point that the political and the religious connection is problematic and