To me, an artist is everyone who is alive and conscious of what they do.

Every moment we are creating, whether we're conscious of it or not.

Art has definitely saved my life.

If there were no art, if I hadn't been exposed to all the art forms that have enriched my life -- I hate to say it.

I don't want to be macabre, but, like, I don't know that I'd be here.

Art was survival for me, even in the midst of war.

I fight so vehemently to keep arts education available for everyone because I know what it feels like to have something exciting to get out of bed every morning for.

The songs that I choose, a lot of them reflect conflicts that I'm dealing with.

I almost believe that what's happening in the song is real It's no longer fiction at all.

It's, like, actually, legitimately happening, and it can take a toll.

[ Chuckles ] I think it took 45 years to become a good actor.

I think it takes that long.

You strip away all the junk, you strip away all the ego, you strip away all the temperament.

Looking at the possibility of spending the rest of my life in prison, I had to do some very, very deep soul-searching.

That was one of the most powerful moments in my life.

I'm an artist.

That's who I am.

Art is something that, in the end, does really save mankind, I believe so.

It's my definition of God, I think.

♪♪♪ Hi.

I'm Peppermint.

I'm Cécile McLorin Salvant.

-Fadi Khoury.

-I'm Shoshana Bean.

Barbara Barrie.

-Hank Willis Thomas.

-Raqib Shaw.

I'm Jesse Krimes, and this is how art changed me.

It's funny because on my drive up here, I passed this, um, New Jersey Department of Corrections van, and it really made me remember sitting in the back of that, like, cold, cavernous metal van shackled from my wrist to my waist to my feet to the van, and just, like, feeling completely isolated and alone.

I think that's what life would be like if art were not in it.

I went to college for art, ended up graduating shortly, like two or three weeks after that, I got indicted by the federal government and, um, went into the federal prison system.

The government was basically able to take everything from me.

They removed me from my house.

They removed me from my family.

They took all of my clothing.

Every kind of societal marker of identity could be -- could be taken.

It was something that was not core to me or mine.

But I realized very quickly that the one thing that was core to me was my ability to create, and that I am an artist, and that that is the one thing in this world that no one can take from me.

That was when I knew that no matter how much time I was looking at, whether it was five years, 10 years, 20 years, life, that I was going to utilize this time in the most productive, powerful way that I could.

And so when I was in solitary, I started to utilize little slivers of prison-issued soap to talk about these ideas of kind of what the carceral system was originally designed to do, which was which was around repentance.

And so I would transfer, um, mugshot images out of the newspaper onto the surface of the soap.

And then I ended up getting transferred to general population.

That's when I started taking images out of The New York Times and transferring them onto the surface of prison bedsheets using hair gel and a spoon.

Worked on it pretty much 12 to 13 hours a day over the next three years.

The kind of psychological shift that happened in my mind with that, from thinking of myself as a criminal, something other than normal, and being able to replace that label of "criminal" with, "No, I'm not that.

I'm an artist.

That's who I am."

In the prison system, every person in there has their armor on.

Like, everyone has been traumatized, everyone has been wounded.

It's not a space where you can show vulnerability.

But the one thing that kind of cut through that, like -- like a hot knife to butter, was making artwork.

I was born at home, and the legend has it that my father carried me out, after they made sure I was breathing and healthy and -- that he carried me out into the living room, and he put on Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life," and he played "Isn't She Lovely?"

So I can very quite literally say that music has been in my life since the moment I virtually opened my eyes.

There's another one that my parents love to tell.

I was like 2 or 3 years old.

And we went to see my cousins in their tap recital, and apparently, I couldn't stay in my seat.

And I got out of my seat, and I ran up on the stage, because I wanted to be performing with them.

Why my parents allowed me to get up and out my seat and all the way down the aisle to the stage... [Chuckles] ...I still don't understand.

However, it was, I think, in that moment that my mom was like, "We have to do something with this child.

She, like, desperately wants to be up there."

I mean, I think really, ultimately when I was finishing high school, really, my plan was to go to a state school and major in business so that I could take over my dad's business.

But it was my mom who was like, "Don't you want to at least give this a shot?"

I think that was probably the big turning point in my life.

I never looked back.

I never, ever had a plan B.

A month after I moved here, I got the off-Broadway revival of "Godspell."

That was just sort of, like, my introduction.

I don't know that it was my break.

I just think there are a lot of little fractures that ultimately create a break.

[ Laughs ] And that was a really big fracture, "Hairspray" being another.

And then of course, "Wicked" being really where the whole branch broke, I suppose.

It was life-changing.

If "Hairspray" was the foundation, then "Wicked" was sort of the house, I guess.

You know, I really always was straddling the fence between wanting to be a pop star and be a Broadway performer.

So once theater took me to the point of finishing my run in "Wicked," I was like, "Now it's time for me to move to Los Angeles and give my songwriting and my recording career as much time and attention as I've given theater."

I think that songwriting started as sort of like my own form of therapy for myself, to sort of, like, work through situations by being able to write the story.

Was the first album I wrote after a man that I was dating just tragically died in a car accident, and that -- I think that's why that first album was so vital and so urgent.

I had so much to feel and say and move through.

And I absolutely credit that album with helping me to do so.

And sometimes when you don't get to say -- when you don't get to have the last word, or you don't get the luxury of being able to say the things you'd like to say to a person, I just think it's such a gift to be able to have that final forever word in a song.

One of my favorite memories is just this image that I have of, like, my parents didn't know I was walking in the room, and I remember them dancing to one of my songs.

And that was just so incredibly moving, so beautiful to kind of be a fly on the wall and see them -- see them move to my music.

I mean, that really meant a lot.

In a way, I almost can imagine a world without the arts.

I have some moments, like sometimes after a tour, where I get really low and get really depressed, and those are moments without the arts.

Those are moments where consuming art is the only thing that can get me out of it and engaging with art, making something.

I know what this -- It's like a certain kind of emptiness, just everything kind of falls flat.

There's a lack of purpose.

I mean, music is something that has been proven to, unlike anything else, get us moving -- Get our bodies moving, get our memories moving, get our minds moving.

I mean, this has been studied by countless scientists.

I even remember seeing this with my grandma.

She had a pretty -- Like, she was dealing with Alzheimer's.

And she was not remembering a lot of things, but she was remembering the music, and she was -- You could see her wake up.

She was sort of fading away, but you could see her wake up to the music, if we played something for her that she knew or -- I mean, and it's a real thing.

That's when you realize that this is not just about vanity and about, you know, people congratulating themselves for being such great artists.

Like, there's that, too, but there's also this real engine.

It's like an engine for the world.

And when we don't have that -- I mean, we can't not have that.

I think it's -- In a way, it's like it's impossible, because someone somewhere will make something, and someone somewhere will sing something.

It's like we're compelled to do it.

We have to.

I'm born in Iraq, Baghdad, in 1986.

Dance is really involved in the culture of the Middle East.

So, you dance in parties.

You dance in weddings.

And there are traditional dances that everyone dances.

And in my teenage years, I had to figure out how to distance myself from the expectation of the family and the society.

I knew I was gay, but I -- I wasn't connected with men at all, and I was so afraid of connecting with men because of my upbringing, that constant affirmation of, "You're not man enough if you dance like that.

You're not strong enough.

You're not tough enough.

You're not aggressive enough," which meant that men should be aggressive and tough and angry and play violently.

That pushed me so far away from men that I didn't want to have to do with them.

And so when I came to New York and to be free, the dance world in its classical form celebrates the woman and celebrates the romance of a man and a woman.

But my trap was my star partner was a woman.

And she was the love of my life for six years, seven years until she broke up with me, and she let me go, and she told me that, "No, you are not authentic."

I was challenged with the reality of losing everything and realizing that, wow, I actually don't like myself, and I'm actually very afraid of who I am, and I am as homophobic to myself as the rest of the world was to me.

Who am I?

Am I anybody outside of this heteronormative formula that I created?

And so I decided to create a solo.

That solo included the most really vulnerable moments in my creative journey.

And I saw the inhibition, and I saw the anger, and I saw the frustration, and I saw the fear.

Oh, my God, the fear.

And it's all embedded in the articulation of the body.

That journey of achieving that choreography, just getting through the song... [Chuckles] ...was a great struggle and a great realization of how much I need to work.

But it was my real, only opportunity where I can stand in front of a group of people and say, "I'm gay."

So it was a gentle way for me to really come out and make peace with myself.

I must have been about 11 or 12.

Somebody asked me to do something for the Corpus Christi Little Theater.

That was my first introduction to acting.

Then I went to a junior college and they had a drama club, and that drama coach really came after me and she changed my life.

I had great teachers there.

And being part of a group, because I was a Jewish girl in a pretty non-Jewish school, and I felt I had a group.

And then after that, I went to the University of Texas and decided to be a teacher of education, I mean, a theater -- theater teacher.

I started being cast in a lot of plays at Texas University.

And the second year I was there, they called me in and they said, "You're not going to be a teacher."

I said, "I'm not?"

And they said, "No, you're going to be an actress."

I said, "No, no, I have to have a way of earning a living.

I'm going to be a teacher."

"No, you're going to be..." And they changed my whole curriculum [Laughing] and forced me to be an actress, literally.

And I was really -- I really protested because I didn't see any future, any way of earning a living, do you know?

My father had died.

I felt I should stay and help support my mother.

"Forget it," they said.

And that's how I became an actress.

Well, I came to New York, right from -- from Corpus Christi.

But I started to study with Uta Hagen and she said, "You're too slick, you're too fancy.

You don't have a craft."

And she really gave me, us, a craft.

And then I realized what I -- what you needed to do to survive in a professional situation.

You need a craft.

My entire professional life, almost, I was married, I had children to take care of.

If the -- If the part came along that I wanted to do, I would do it, and I don't -- I mean, I had some dark places, I had cancer and I was in chemo every Thursday, and I was doing Anne Meara's play at the Manhattan Theater Club.

So I would go up to Columbia Presbyterian every Thursday.

And usually, you know, you get an infusion.

But I was in a hurry.

I had to go to rehearsals, so they would jab me with this stuff, and I'd go to rehearsal, and at lunchtime, they'd all go to lunch and I would take a nap.

That was a kind of turning point because I thought, "Obviously, this work means something to me... if I will go through this to get this done."

And I did, and I think that's because I wanted -- I want to tell my story.

I want to tell the story, not my story, but the story.

And I don't think actually most actors are -- they do it for ego.

They do it because the art means a lot to them.

It's art.

I was born in Calcutta, and I grew up in Kashmir.

And I think for the first, um, I would say 16 years of my life, I was living in Kashmir.

It was a perfect, idyllic life that I thought that, you know, I would -- I would just continue being there.

But then in 1988, uh, the great troubles started, and there was a civil war.

That is when my family decided that it was a good idea to leave.

I came to England in 1993 -- was my first time.

You know, my family, they were merchants, and I was destined to be one of them and work in the family business like everyone else did.

And then I went to the National Gallery in London, and I saw the Holbein paintings.

I saw The Ambassadors, to be precise.

That's a painting of merchants.

And I realized that I would want to be -- I would not want to be the merchant.

I would be the one who paints them.

It would be fair to say that it was that one painting that convinced me that I would be a painter one day.

In 1998, I went to art college.

I had absolutely no money whatsoever.

And I did not have a place to live.

I was squatting on top of a peanut factory called Percy Dalton's Peanut Factory.

And I remember that it had -- Uh, there was no heating.

There was no hot water.

And that is how I went through my four years of degree and one more year of making the work before I was picked up by a gallery.

And I tell you, it was -- it was fun and I had a great time.

But there are certain paintings that I made in that period.

For example, there was the "Garden of Earthly Delights" series.

When I look at any painting from that series, I feel really cold because it was really, really cold.

It was very, very cold.

And then, of course, things happened, and then, uh, one of my paintings came up into auction, and it sold for a fairly large price.

And then the depression started.

I completely withdrew and I started making -- I deliberately started making paintings that were very ugly.

A very, very violent series.

And, of course, I was not well.

It was -- I was in an absolute mess.

And then after that, uh, was the "Paradise Lost" series, which again, um, was a lot about exile and finding myself very, very alone in a place where the only thing that kept me going on was my belief in the paintings.

There is something that we put in the paintings without knowing, be it suffering, be it angst, be it whatever it is, and it gets stuck in the paintings, you know?

And we as humans, it doesn't matter whether we understand art or we don't.

We can feel that something.

The first time that I did drag, my version of drag, would be when I sort of tricked my grandmother into helping me get into drag.

Essentially, there was these characters in a superhero movie.

And there was a female one, but they all had similar outfits.

But the female Martian was, like, more embellished and, you know, more fancy and all that.

She had, like, slits in her outfit so you could see her skin and you could see her legs.

Very provocative.

To somebody who hadn't seen the movie, my grandmother, they all were the same.

And she made her outfit for me.

And so I was, like, running around and, like [Imitating lasers firing] like, just, like, living -- I was just -- I felt so empowered and felt so free.

Then once that happened, I was like, I'm never really dressing up as, like, a "male" character again.

You know, I think back to some artists that were really inspirational and iconic, of course, but also really gave me permission to feel okay with the feelings that I was having around my queerness and around my own identity.

Artists like Janet Jackson and Prince were either writing or behaving in a way that let me know that it was okay just to be who I am.

And I wasn't really getting that message from anyone else or any other type of media.

As I was bolstering my drag persona to other people, my trans identity was growing sort of under the cover.

You know, I mean, I'd always been involved in theater and always loved theater, but it always felt so sterile and really -- honestly, really straight and white.

And the first time I, like... was, like, dumbfounded, stupefied, entranced, transfixed by a piece was "Rent" on Broadway.

The role of Angel, the character of Angel, was the first time I'd ever seen anybody who resonated with me in that way and was being loved and adored and not, like, physically violated in any way, and someone that other characters looked up to and I guess I would say probably, like, the heart of the show.

I'm getting goosebumps now.

And so it's probably not a surprise that I changed my drag name temporarily to Angel.

[ Laughs ] I use art as a tool to learn about myself, to process, um... and understand [Chuckles] who I am, how I came to be, where I'm going.

When I think about a specific work that changed me, they would be "Question Bridge: Black Males," which was a video-mediated megalogue between African American men where we had a question-and-answer exchange.

The premise was that there's as much diversity within any demographic as there is outside of it.

And so what we would do is we'd go to self-identified Black men and video-record them asking questions of other self-identified Black men.

We thought we would show one question to, you know, 5 or 10 Black men and choose the best answer, but instead we got 5 or 10 different answers.

The same person could respond to a very different question in a way that might be contradictory or surprising.

And we realized through this process, almost five years of making, that it wasn't really about Black men, it was about people -- What happens when people are put into groups, how they exist within the group, and also how they find agency outside of that, while maintaining their own identity.

In the process of making "Question Bridge," the surprise that I constantly had was like an awakening where I was challenged to reconsider who I am, what I know about the world, and how I navigate it.

And as a self-identified Black man who does not believe in race, uh, in part because of that, you know, because I am my own person and that race is a -- is a framing and a construct that has nothing to do with my internal life.

It has everything to do with what I do with my external life.

But inside me, I'm an infinite, beautiful human being.

♪♪♪ If I had never gone into dance class, if I weren't raised in a house with music, if I weren't encouraged to be in theater troupes, and if I didn't have that community and those little groups of weirdos that I would find everywhere, I can't even imagine.

It wouldn't be cute.

It would not be pretty.

I think acting means to me communication.

And I don't think it has to do with ego at all, really.

I just think it's connection between human beings.

You're on the stage and they're in the audience and you're connecting.

That's telling a story, isn't it?

Thomas: What I love about being an artist is that I feel like I'm -- I get to be a form of like a seer or a psychic, you know, where, like, I have something in my mind and I'm like, I'm going to use all of this alchemy to, like, bring something into being that, like, no one else can see happening.

And then it happens and then I'm like, "Hey!"

But then after it leaves my -- my realm, it's got its own life.

Increasingly, I believe that these are for generations to follow.

And that's why they do record the time and our day and age and I think the human condition, which at the end of the day is universal.

Even when I was in Iraq, it's only when I am dancing that I feel celebrated, loved, and desired and respected.

Singing and music has been a way to really be direct and say what I mean and what I feel.

It's easier for me to express some of these darker, scarier things.

I think it's just really important that we focus on positive narratives, um, versus these, like, hypermediated, like, stereotypical ways that people who are incarcerated are often depicted.

People are already human.

And so for me it's like, how do we provide the visibility of that versus hiding it behind walls?

And how do we then create the space for people to engage with that?

I grew up thinking and knowing that, like, artists, in my opinion, had, if not a responsibility, then definitely a power in advocacy.

Drag, to me, meant activism, and we were the -- oftentimes the spokespeople, the mouthpiece for the community and the people who would, like, rally the community and sometimes wake up the community, you know?

And so I learned from some of the best, and then I just carried the torch.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪