 Okay. Welcome back for the next panel discussion. I'm Barney O'Hanlon from the city company and Stephen Weber from the city company will just be facilitating this ginormous conversation. So welcome back to the HowlRound folks. Thanks for being here. I was hoping the tables were gonna stay up so we could perform a scene from the last supper, but we'll just have to deal with this semi-circle, which I made. So legacy is a ginormous word and it feels very weighty at the moment. It feels substantial. So before we go down there and I'd like to open it up earlier to a conversation with all of us a little bit earlier I think. Can we just go down our little semi-circle and if you would introduce yourselves and your company and where your company lives in the world. This is fascinating because this is a really global global panel. My name is John Alex Soto. I'm from Colombia. I live in Bogotá, Colombia. We made as a company or we started this project of a company, not really a company, but a bunch of friends that were together and that the train is putting together. In 2010 I made Lorenzo and Tina and I made it for Gina and we started there. I live in Bogotá. I'm from Colombia. I live in Bogotá. We are here. I'm Tina Mitchell. I'm from Australia. I live in New York. I think I company is based in Colombia. My name is Lorenzo Montanini and as you can guess I'm from Italy, but I live in Spain, Barcelona. And yes I guess our company is based in Colombia. The actual name of the company is Colombia. It's Colombia. It's called Vueltas Bravas. It's black. I'll explain you later when we meet. And you should know that they currently have a show opening this Thursday called Ms. Julia at La Mama until the 25th of June. Please come. These are amazing people and let's keep going on the amazing people list. Hi, I'm Mia. We're from 9 years theater, Singapore. We're a Singapore Mandarin theater company. We produce shows, perform in Mandarin, always with English subtitles because our society is very multicultural. And in the company, I'm the company director which means I just take care of all the shit. It means she's the boss. And an actor, yeah. So I produce, I act and I also listen to instructions from the director. She pays my salary. I'm Nelson. I'm from Singapore and we're quite sure we're stationed in Singapore. We're not going anywhere. We're working from there. So yes, I think one thing to highlight is that the company focuses a lot on actor training. That's why we're here. So that's it for now. Great. Hello, I'm Megan Hanley. Logistics. I'm the co-artistic director of the syndicate. And we are based in five different cities right now, actually five different places. We're not all urban. Some of us are also rural. And so we talk about ourselves as being a de-centered theater company or Jonathan's company talks about being a super geographic company, which I love. He's the artistic director of In the Water. And so I'm based in Brooklyn, New York, which is one of our producing homes. Hi, I am Yannuka. I'm from the Netherlands. And I think I'm the most de-centered of our company. Also founding member of the syndicate. Hi, I'm Lee Hendricks. I am a founding member of the syndicate. I was in New York when we began. But now I am based in Huntington, Pennsylvania, a town of 7,000 people, where I just completed teaching for my first year at Junia college. So yeah, that is where I am based now. So legacy. Legacy. It's us. We are here. One of the first things I want to ask, how did you how did you meet and decide to become a company? What was the seed that got planted? Sure. I met all of these people in separate city company trainings, Gina first, then Lorenzo, then John Alex. And in one training, John Alex and I were paired together a lot. Ellen put us in things all the time. And of course, it's fierce. I want to work with him. And then one session, he came up to me and said, I want to work with you. You'll come to Columbia. And that happens a lot in these sessions. And you go, sure, sure, sure, that's going to happen. Yeah. And he said, sure, it is, it's going to happen. You name the show. And I said, well, I want to do Miss Julie. I'm thinking bilingual, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, sure, you play Miss Julie, I play Jean, who should direct. And we were in the same workshop as Lorenzo. And we said, crazy idea. He lives in Italy. But maybe he comes and directs. Sure, let's have him. And who plays Christina up? I know this amazing Colombian actress. She was with me in Saratoga in 2009. Gina, how about yes, I know her too. Let's do it. And the next, the next thing you know, we're in Bogota. And we, we did, we did sitting in John Alex's lounge room and dad was like, I'll write the adaptation for you. And we're like, Oh, okay, this is happening. That's just kind of how it happened. And we never really said, we're formally going to make this company. We just came out of doing a show together. And we've done eight seasons of that show. And that's, that's kind of how we are here together. Yeah, for me, it has to do with while I read in the hamburgers book about when you have an idea, and you start processing that idea, there are a lot of courses that come around you and help to make real that idea. And that started to happen. When I was saying, I remember the contrary, no, that Lorenzo and Tina approached me and said, let's get a beer. And then I was asking them to come to Colombia and see that we have a festival that is huge. There is a festival in the American theater. And it was an opportunity to get together and see if we can do some process of rehearsal and get to some point. And in that festival, J.A. was teaching a workshop as well. So he was coming to Colombia three days before he was studying teaching. And I was housing all these people in my house in Bogota. And we were having breakfast together, lunch together, dinner together and rehearsing the living room of my house. And then going to a little theater and starting this process. And it came to be a show that we did in 2012 as a work in progress in the city studio in Manhattan. And then we finally finished the work in Bogota in 2015 and get an invitation to the Iber-American in 2014 and get an invitation to Festival de Teatro de Manizales in Colombia as well that same year. And Medellín and then Cadiz at Spain and then Napoli and then another season in Bogota as well. So here we are. Keeps going. Nelson and Mia, how about the origin story of Nine Years Theater? How did we meet? We're husband and wife. He came to Srisama first, nine years ago, because I had to stay home to take care of our twins. And then I came five years ago, so we were here separately and then almost immediately after I went back, we started Nine Years Theater. So a lot of us asked, why is it called Nine Years? And then we would say, well, because it took us nine years to realize why we needed to form this company. Because previously we just wanted to, oh let's form a company, but what for? But then after that we knew. I think it goes back a little while ago. In 2006, actually the city company was in Singapore performing at the art festival and a couple of you guys, even included, were there. And then they brought workshops to Singapore. So as a young, actually not so young actor, I attended the workshop. And actually before that I was already thinking that, you know, there should be some kind of things for actors to do while they're not rehearsing or trying to perform a play. So in between, what do we do? Most of us book a holiday to Bali. But that can't be it, I was thinking. That can't be it. It's something in between. So I know it's a kind of actor training, but I don't know how I've not seen anything like that. So in the workshop I encountered the Suzuki Method and Viewpoints and I was like, that's it. That's it. That's the thing I was looking for, right? And then 2006 and then two years past, 2008, I came to the city summer and following that 2012, a year came to the city summer and in between both of us went to Toga as well, trained with the Scott company. And yes, something like a nine years past and then we decided we need to have a company. I'd just like to just point out one thing that I was inspired partly by Anne's story. I know you used to tell a story about your meeting with Arumushkin, where as a young director you asked her, you know, any advice for a young director and she said to have a company. What are you going to do without a company, right? You know, and she said something like, don't get me wrong, you'll break your heart. You'll break your heart, yes. So I told Mia that let's be prepared to get hurt and, you know, have our heart broken, but we need to have a company and therefore we had a company. So the syndicate, we talk about ourselves, one of the ways we talk about ourselves at this, we're celebrating our third birthday currently as we like to call it as we hit these marks together. We talk about ourselves as a company that is mostly women, but not all are female identified and a lot of us are queer, but not all of us. And that is in some ways, that's a big part of what we're doing together, why we're together is to develop, highlight, elevate, explore queer and female voices and bodies, both the seven of us, there are seven of us currently, and then other artists that we can support and make work with. So that's sort of just a little bit about how we talk about ourselves, how we see ourselves. And then, but we did, we met one another through the training and because of City Company. And so we were six of us in the first City Conservatory class. We all individually have different, you know, first points of contact with the training and with City and Megan. That was on logistics. It was on logistics. Y'all just got to get you a Megan handling. Sorry if we can't have her because we do. And so it was through the process of nine months of working together with other awesome artists, some of whom are also here today from our Conservatory class and with City Company. But it keeps, as it keeps coming up, it's about people, right? We keep talking about, you know, so we needed, yes it's the training and yes it was a shared enthusiasm for that that first brought us into the same place. It was City Company and our desire to be near these artists that brought us into the same place. And then I think, I also want to say like, I think Megan Carter is a real reason why we were able to come together and be, figure out how to do this thing, a great mentor and friend to us as well. We just started, I don't know, I think it started, Megan and I had an impulse around the particular projects that ultimately became our first show that we all made together on an adaptation of the Bacchae called Civility, the next formation point. So unclear. And it was, oh we're excited and we have questions in this play. It was actually in a class with Megan Carter where we were talking about the Bacchae and I was like, this place is so queer without even doing anything about it. We don't want to do it. And Megan was like, yeah. And then it's like, who else? Oh, Yanuka and Eleanor Riley Condit and Emily Spalding-Nautica, you know, Alana Coby, who Andrew Issetkov, you know, we got to, and here we are. And for me personally that's why I came to New York even, was to find my people. And so I did, we did. Awesome. How many company members in nine years? Currently we have seven actors, but it would be down to six by the end of this year. So six, I would say. Including Mia, so the company director, she's an actress as well. She's in the ensemble. So six ensemble and one artistic director and one other administrative executive. Do you have the space? We have a little studio about 80 square meters. Sorry, I come from the other side of the world. 80 square meters, a small studio where we do everything in there, including admin work, logistics. Kind of like a storeroom once in a while. Yeah. And definitely rehearsal space, workshop space, classes, everything. And this sort of, sorry, I'm just going. This sort of gets a little bit, so you have a space, you don't have space. Clearly don't. You don't have a space. How do you do it? How do you get together? How do you make work? That's one of the problems, one of the biggest problems that's there. Basically what happened with us is that when we started, as John Alex said before, we went to Colombia and he was nice enough to find a space for us. And so we started rehearsing there. And then we all went away and one year passed. But we said, next year we're going to all go to New York and we need to find a space. So we asked you guys. And you said, yes, the space is available. Please come and we stayed in your studio for, I think, 10 days? 10 days. And that's when we made the show. We rehearsed 10 days basically morning to night. And at the end of those 10 days we did an open work in progress version of it. And that was it. And then we had, again, all of us, we had to go away. And another year passed. But we managed to get a theater in Bogota that wanted to see the show and to have the show. So one year later we all went back to Bogota and this time we had a theater. So we did our first season there. And again, the story repeats. Then we got invited to a festival. But we had to wait another year in between. So we stay in touch a lot. Thank God we have Skype and WhatsApp. I don't know that. So a lot of the work actually gets done from the distance. And once we are together we try to, yes, maximize time, everything. And also because we are traveling, it happens that wherever we go, one of us is in charge of producing, organizing, whatever. When we went to Italy, I had to do everything. When we go to Colombia, John Alex and Gina took care of stuff. Now that we are in New York, Tina is in charge of it. So we just, you know, put different shoes on depending on what we have to do. And we try to do the work. Fantastic. Yeah, we have the same actually that we ask city for Spain. But we also try to create work over the internet when Skype works. Do you rehearse via Skype? Yes, so that was it. Yeah, and then time becomes really important. Because when I am available for Skype, I'm having dinner. Andrea's having breakfast. And in New York they're having lunch. Right. So we eat together. But it's a different meal. So time is very consumed. That makes it also very practical. We work very hard to get into the same room together, though. Unuka's really been pushing us in a good way, a very good way, to make sure that every year we bring the whole company back together. And we do, when we're rehearsing plays, when we're in performance mode, we get the company together as many as we can. We're also fortunate that we've had, because we're based in many places, I think we have access to more diversity of institutions than we would otherwise. So we spent two summers at the Chicago Performance Lab, which is based out of the University of Chicago, which was an incredible gift. And there is something about not being in one place that opens up opportunities. But as you're saying, you have to, whoever's home base it is, has to work real hard to make it happen. And it's wearing two hats and it's hard. But it's interesting, because I think on this stage, we represent sort of the last non-net natives. We are the last people to have known a world before the internet. Yeah, my little brother's four years younger than me, and he has never known a world without the internet. So there's something very different about the way I think this generation of artists thinks about collaboration because of that. The training that we all share comes in at this point, because we are able to immediately start working together, even if it's one year after the last time we saw each other. So we enter the room and we're like, okay, let's train. We're at Tabison, train 10, 15 minutes and do the work and do the thing. And that surprised me a lot, but it doesn't matter that one year went by. Somehow, yes, we all have our lives. We do a lot of different things. Of course, we cannot survive out of this. But then when we are together, somehow, we all share language, you know, an approach to the work. And we have all those instruments that allow us to immediately start working together and do the thing, so it becomes very practical and somehow easy. Yeah, we can do so many things over the internet right now. But the thing we can do is having the energy in the room and share the energy on stage and watch each other. That is something that I really miss when we're not together, because that is something you can do over the internet. So the training provides us to center ourselves again because we are decentralized, yeah. And how does having a space affect the kind of training you do or how you use the training or how your company stays together? Well, in the beginning, but also I think the origin of the company is kind of different and informed the way we would go ahead. But I think right at the beginning, we were quite certain that we needed a space because there was also the intention to share the training and to let people know about the training and our work. So I thought having a kind of a base and for the actors to congregate and people to come to the space and counter the training, so that is quite important for us. So hence, that serves as a kind of base for us to do that. I think in an interesting way we were talking about the other day that also because some of these groups are geographically challenged because the members are all over the place. And in Singapore, because it's so small, it's easy kind of for us too. You just have to take a bus and then we are all in the studio. But constantly I was telling Mia that in the long term our aim is to actually get out of the city, find another place. So we have a base there but we need somewhere else that we can retreat to to do some other kind of training or work. And in Singapore it's hard to find a place. I'm even thinking Malaysia or maybe some offshore islands. The problem is how do you convince actors to take a boat with you to an offshore island. I think eventually we'll find a way to do that. So this interesting thing about whether you are apart and space and our sensibility to space, to location that relates to our training comes up every time. But also this space allows us as Nelson said to really share the training with the community and sometimes we hold classes but usually throughout the year we hold jams which is like a training platform that is available for all artists in Singapore as long as you're in Singapore who have learned either Suzuki or Viewpoints to come train with us. And that's really something, that's just a big part in our company. It's so interesting to me just thinking of everyone here and the conversations that have occurred over the last two days there's a sense of, how do I put this? There's a sense of over and over again like toga. Saratoga. And now it's still, I mean this sort of goes to your point, John, it actually is starting to become slowly but more universal from this, to this, which is so moving. So we're kind of the internet in that sense. Swear the web. I mean we are this thing that keeps the matrix, you know. It's very beautiful, it's a very beautiful idea of central point expansion. That's all I have to say. And then the coming, I mean together which speaks to coming back. Right, I think it was a second of Bondo yesterday and talking about sort of the hunger that he felt in a lot of places, particularly when we were all training yesterday to just be there to be here together and speaking to this physical being in the room that Yanuka is talking about. And we have the same feeling about the training that it's an individual relationship that we all have with our training, right. And we, as we've spoken about this morning and asked a little bit, like how do you carry it into other places and carry it with you and other kinds of work. But it's almost like it's for me and I also think for myself. How about that? This idea for me that the training, it's in here and then there's also somehow manages to exist in this sort of space somehow that I can step into and reconnect with myself and my people that is one of the big gifts I think that I'm still poking around with. I think a little bit more about space and our training is also that in the beginning we're also trying to spread the idea of active training in Singapore and it's not that common, people don't think about training. Maybe they do but it's kind of like, you know, at the back of the mind, maybe I'll consider it. Well, let's see how it goes and all. And there were very often a lot, I would say, excuses like there's no space, there's no time and we don't know what to do, there's no people in a way. So it's quite important for us to just, you know, I'm going to get a space, I'm going to tell you it's not that difficult. If you can't find a space, I have a space here and then we'll just be there Monday evening, we wear our topi, we'll just be there at 7.30, so just come. You know, I've very clear the path for you. Nothing, nothing you need to worry, you just have to turn up. Which is very difficult. I think Anne said that, yeah, the greatest challenge is turn up and train. So the space becomes something that makes no excuse for anybody. I would like to say that they, and then, yeah, started with me with Ellen Lauren and J.A. in 1997 in Bogota, Colombia. And as it happened to everybody here, most of the people here, that was striking me so hard, the training, happened to be the same that Nelson was describing before about, I need something to do as an actor when I'm not rehearsing at the show, so we went through this process of seven days of training, doing composition with points and Suzuki, of course, and at the end, as I was trying always to be in the first row of the training, I'm very enthusiastic, Ellen gave me the shinai and said, pitch, train. I said, okay. So I felt that legacy on my hands. I was 27 at that point and I was like, okay, I'll do this. So I went to the theater I used to work with and asked, can I use the space of the theater from seven to nine every morning? And they say yes, you said. So there was no Facebook, there was no, there was no internet, there was no, this kind of social media right now we have. So I would say first as the person, if you want to come to train with me, and at the beginning it was the company I used to work with to come to train, seven to nine and share with them this training I had just found. And it's a paradox, but the people who was less interested in the training with the company used to work with me. So maybe that's one of the reasons we work with these people that we met during the training session, we don't see all the time, we don't work all the time in the same country, but we share a language and we share a passion, not only for the training, but for fear as well. I continue with this work as a teacher. I now work with the university in Colombia. It will give me more money if I do some workshop outside of the university, but I want some continuous line for the training as well. And it's better for me, I think it's better to do it in a university when I see the students this year in the next as well, in the next as well and we can build something together to make this legacy. That started with Ellen giving me the Shimei. We make this legacy stronger and stronger. So the space, we always find it. You know, I go to the connections I have and the contacts I have in Colombia and I always say, I knock on the door, it opens immediately. I say, okay, come on. Sometimes we have been with Ernesto Martinez with former assistant to city companies, workshops as well. So we have been spelled from some spaces because we sound too hard. Very easy. So it was about breaking the floor, you know. And now we understand that it's not and blah, blah, blah. But you knock on the door and always open. And now for us, it's a big deal. We're in New York. We're going to do it and we'll keep doing it. We have another project right now and we'll find the space. We know it. It's inspiration we get from city companies. Okay, I went to other directors. I have been working with other people but it's inspiration this company has given to me and we have collected a week. And then... I'm going to speak in Spanish. For me, it was different because I met the city company for Yonales. I started training with Yonales in 1999 and only 10 years later I was able to personally meet the city company and I was able to come and meet with the city company. And three years later in 2012 we were able to work together. I'm going to say this. She came training through the classes I was teaching with Ernesto Martinez and Bogotá. Because Ernesto Martinez was here too and was with Ellen and Jayette but he was training in another place in Bogotá. So I said to Ernesto, let's do this together. Let's do this together. I started in Camarinda and the city company performed in 1999 and we had that space. Ernesto came and we were teaching Gina was attending those classes. Those classes were for free. A teacher I have told me, no, no, no, don't do that for free. At least a dollar. They have to know they have to pay something. At least one dollar. So we say, oh, okay, one dollar. You get the dollar, you get the class, okay? So what Gina is saying, she gets to the classes we were teaching then 10 years later she was able to come to Skidmore and Saratoga and spend a moment and see that what we were teaching was wrong. No, no, no. I was very angry. She was crying a lot. Years later I'm a teacher at the university and everybody has a talent with that. So long time. Now we teach together at the university at a university in Bogota. My class is going to have nothing at the university. She asks me why I'm not so hard in the students right now at the time. As I used to be, she's getting old. I'm getting some. For her it's very important to find this team and she shares a language with me. And this training is putting together for her everything she was going through at the university as voice classes, dance, movement, whatever. She says that to her students right now. This is not the training, the only training, but it's the training I found that helped me to put together everything I've been through in my life as an actor. And be given a city company. I don't know. Wow, so I think I knew this anyway but just hearing it, that the Suzuki method of actor training is so much more than just this training that you do in a room. It's a lot bigger and deeper. Ooh, I'm getting a little weepy. Do I use the word spiritual? It's big. It's big stuff. How many people have been to Toga? Steven. I kind of have asked my company members because I haven't been yet. What's it like to train there? Because it's so beautiful just from the pictures and seeing the video the other day. Oh my God, it's magnificent. So many things. The physical landscape is beautiful. It's incredibly hard to get there. So it's really, you start a journey from the minute you get on the plane because you get these scant directions and you're like, ooh, okay. I'll figure it out somehow. So it's a commitment right from the get-go. And you're in a country where you can't speak the language and you get on this little train and then you meet someone in a car and then you go up and you're like, oh, wow. But for me, the isolation of it is incredible because you are faced with yourself. There's no distraction. You don't have, well, when I was there the internet was great. So it's like, okay, wow, I'm faced with this training. Five hours a day was five or something hours a day. It was very hot when I was there. You look out the window when you're training onto this mountain top, it's infinity, it's beautiful. Then there's these flies, these really vicious flies. If you're walking at dusk and you stop, you will just get attacked by these flies that bite you. So in the training, if one of these flies lands on you, you're like, oh, shit. But it's very personal. To me, I first came to the training at Saratoga. So to be in this little bubble where you're outside of your regular life and this even more so, it's, you are. You're in this countryside and there's space to look at yourself inside this work. And here in New York, yes, you do go into the city company studio and you are in this space, but then outside, you're back to this real life thing. You're back to your life, but there it's, it really gets to seep into your soul, into your body and it's hard. The level is up there and you do, you go to the river and you wick. You can't walk and you're like, how do I get up tomorrow and do this again? Because I feel like I suck. I'm failing in everything. I'm failing at just being a human being. And you're like, okay, I'm learning all this stuff. I mean, it allows you to time a space for it to sink in. And that was, it's an incredible gift. I think we're always looking for that, you know, and finding spaces to train in and finding places in the world or in the country. Maybe one of the reasons we're here partially is that it is, as Anne said, away from New York City, fewer distractions. So that process of looking at yourself, there's fewer ways to escape it. And that's what we're looking for is ways to prevent ourselves from escaping, looking at ourselves objectively. Which is what the training can give us and does give us, but it's sort of like how can we deepen that? How can we strengthen that? Maybe that goes to finding an island off the coast of Malaysia to go work. But I think at the same time there's a wonderful contradiction here. We're trying to be part of society and we have something to say. And we want to be part of it. We want to be political and be part of the change that we all want. And at the same time, in order to do this we go away. And so maybe we need both, yeah. That's not the tension that we always talk about in our life as well. We need space and time for ourselves to make the work and then feel ready to go in. And New York is here. A few hours away, I'll get probably even further away. Really, Tina has said a lot about what I feel as well when I was there. And also another part of it is the whole discipline seeing the Scott company do things. How they wake up like six, seven and start breakfast together and always having a company meeting at 10. And never failing to do that. And taking turns to make breakfast for all of us. And so we are also given a few tasks to do which is at least cleaning our own dormitory and things like that. And being there right on time before training starts. And if we are to see a performance at seven we have to reach by 6.45. Anything after that is considered late. Right? So all this it hits you as a great humanity lesson. A lot of us are there in the summer. I think I'm fortunate or maybe not unfortunate to have been there in winter. And I think winter in Toga is quite a different creature. Got thick snows and it's lovely and dangerous at the same time. But what I want to share is really a small anecdote that I was there in winter to rehearse a play to be presented in the summer festival the following summer. And every morning we have training with the Scott Company or sometimes on our own. There's a group of international artists there making work. So one morning I got off my dorm and then to walk towards a Koyukan where we do our training and it started snowing and started snowing quite heavily so there were wind blowing in my face and all. I was walking along the road uphill to Koyukan and then I pulled up my hoodie and got my backpack and everything and trying to walk against the wind and then at a far end I saw this figure now there working very very slowly and as I approached I saw that it is one of the most senior actors in Scott. He's really senior now and he's walking very slowly against the snow very slowly up the hill to train and as I walked I passed him and I said Ohio because I must he's not back to me and I continue walking but that image never leaves me. The 70 over years old man carrying his sword and walking uphill towards Koyukan in the snow slowly step by step that is what this is about I mean it just dawn on me that is the legacy that is training that is training and that training becomes lifestyle it becomes what you do day by day in every step you take and not just about swinging swords in the room so that is what Toga did to me most importantly to sort of jump off from that to this idea of what being a part of the conservatory did because talking about being in that studio and yes especially when you're coming maybe for a shorter training or folks who live in New York all the time you know and you kind of train from what like you're there from 10 to 2 when you go about your day and come back the next day but having the great gift and privilege on so many levels to be able to spend nine months training and this was before City expanded their space a bit and made a second smaller studio a little more space for students to be our hero was just the studio the like lobby and then there were offices you know and so we were just 20 people on top of each other all of the time passing around you know wonderful things and also lots of illness and we love it but I it's different and these are different experiences that overlap right I mean you know to go to Toga to be in that space but also to have the opportunity to be with City and with one another and in that space that studio to me like the Dicer studio is like up to me feels like a really holy space as well and to have watched City Company in in a way to you know this was someone speaking about about Toga and watching City Company members you know they're picking up your bags and then they're over here and then they're making the thing and then they're in the office you know and it's similar that's what happens also at the studio to be around you know one moment you're getting you know corrections from Ellen in the studio and then like you walk out to go to your locker and Ellen's in the office on the phone you know and then like you know I mean it's all things and all the things that is another big part and from what I'm hearing from you guys and what Barney's touching on too this idea of the training going beyond what we do in the studio beyond beyond viewpoints and to ethos and ethic which came up you know earlier this morning and I think that for me and I think I can speak to for the syndicate to say that some of that is what keep that example that model is what keeps us moving forward we say okay and how to work hard how to be together and we have models for this we have examples for this that we at Akiko recently I believe it was Akiko who said she didn't think we'd make it for years that was in confidence I didn't know that no I didn't know that anyway but I mean I've been a great success we are just translating right now we can but we can keep going I think is another thing well I'm done I think one of the things that the training does in stealing you is not to run away from obstacles so the incredible thing about this is you know we're from all these different countries oh it's never going to work isn't well okay let's try nothing is impossible like I think Mr. Suzuki said international collaboration is impossible so we're sure whatever we should try and it's the same in the training this training is impossible okay well I'm just going to go to the bar then you know you're not you're going to push through it and you learn something about yourself you learn something about how we exist I don't know it is a yeah I don't know what I'm saying here but there's something about facing an obstacle and pushing through it instead of turning away from it you kind of take away into everything you do fighter flight I think there's something because we were talking with and because we've been here in 2008 together and then Emily who's part of that company was here in 2008 so there's a horizontal line that brings us together as well and so that makes me think that there's nothing special about this I mean there is but at the same time it is possible we're not doing something crazy it's just that there's a program out of this training and if you try it's there it's something that nowadays it is possible and it's been done by you guys here and I'm sure there's a lot of other examples that are not in the room and in the room as well so I mean this is a great discovery for me because I thought before that it was something so special that maybe I wouldn't even try it but it was something impossible you need a lot of money to be somebody to try and do stuff you know you have Peter Brook that's done an international theater company you're like okay he's done it of course what could I do but seeing so many examples somehow makes it more human more possible and it takes out this aura of something that is something that you can even try it is hard sure that's a problem you're going to fail that's the worst thing that can happen it also seems to me as a U.S. citizen it seems to me that it's so necessary at the moment that we have artists and others who are trying to cross borders I think not just in the U.S. your country too I know has been through a very scary election and I know many others in this room are coming from places where we are facing what isolationism and racism are doing to our countries and how are we going to respond and I think that one of the things that the training has taught me is how to keep working in the face of impossibility to still despair how to keep going which sounds bad but it's not it's a great gift to know that you can know that you're failing and still keep trying which is I think something that politically artists can do there are so many more companies around the world that have been either born from directly or certainly directly influenced by both the Suzuki Method of Accord Training Company we are just a small little part of a much larger picture which is A, encouraging and B makes you feel a little bit more brave because you've got your warrior friends out there with you your warrior art friends and also that we can and this has come up and that we speak even though we come from different cultures and countries and we might not speak the same actual verbal language we speak a language and we can meet each other and have a conversation because of the training and that to me is powerful and huge and it was incredible in the stage, in the training everyone felt and everyone could understand She's saying that her English was much worse the first time she came here than what it is now and no matter what she could always understand what was going on in the room and what they were doing and so it went over the language barrier maybe before we open it up to questions because I'm curious maybe you guys are too if each of the groups would just talk briefly about how you use the training kind of practically like when do you train how long do you train for who leads, is there a leader do you teach each other do you teach and then also kind of what's behind that is how does it inform your work or how do you think it informs your ensemble or group of friends building or maybe your work if it does then we'll open it up when we train as a group we don't have one person leading from out the front we all train together at the same time if that makes sense we will train before a show for about 15 minutes as a warm up for me it's important in Bogota because it's really high altitude and it's so hard to breathe stomping a shakuhachi is a different thing in Kuala Lumpur then we make our work so it's a way to come together get on the same page and we do that before rehearsals too and we also teach do you want to talk about teaching outside? Tina doesn't know but for me she's the leader maybe because she has been a toga I tried to follow Tina and I was saying yesterday that it was funny but I tried to get to the level of energy that Tina has in the room now that Bondo was talking I was realizing maybe we should do it two on two but even Lorenzo is the director but he's also a performer trains with us it makes us come together as Tina said and share the same language not as style sometimes I'm a musician too yes also we have a musician that collaborates with us that's the way we use it it's the line that crosses our life and the way we get together after many months of not being together to me it helps also as an outside eye and director because there's a way for me to understand what can I see in them, what can I ask them to do somehow, what tasks I can give them and it helps me of course to push whenever I feel that I need to but also know the kind of thing that we could do that we could accomplish it doesn't mean we get there that I get there never happen but I know that there's a target out there and that's what we're shooting at so every time in performance I cannot always train with them because it's often last minute things to fix and prepare but I try to always be there when we perform but if I can yeah even if then I'm singing and running subtitles it's part of doing the work also you know what's pointing we're not training only when we get together we train also separately and with each as well so we're all training almost all the time so as I was saying about the jam platform we hold it almost every Monday evening except when we break because we need the space to put set for our rehearsal it's always three hours first one half hours Suzuki second half is viewpoints and totally inspired by the city company we would rotate within the ensemble to facilitate the sessions and and each of the member would come up weekly with certain things to work on that day like today I'm working on fiction today I'm working on speed and so we suggest all these things to everybody who attends that session to work on and at the end of every training session we would sit down for you know five to ten minutes discussion and we would talk about difficulties we met during that session trying to address the focus that was suggested to work on that day other than that the ensemble ourselves we also train weekly with Nelson and to work on other than Suzuki and also other things maybe nothing to talk about so the Monday Jam platforms provide the regular training for the ensemble as well as the community we continuously learn and relearn from several artists among us in that platform and then I think every Thursday we try to keep it to Thursday the ensemble together and then we will of course do Suzuki and and also extrapolations extensions and things that come out from these two trainings and we're beginning to develop our own actors work that comes out from these two training as well so that's what we do so basically we in the most ideal case we have we train twice a week if not twice throughout the year as much as possible and then besides that we have then classes that we offer periodically to the community to teach and then we have also begun to go to schools to share our training in Suzuki and Viewpoints and I'm actually happy to report that by next year all three main colleges arts colleges in Singapore would have both Suzuki and Viewpoints in their core curriculum but in terms of how it helped maybe apply to our work because surprisingly in Singapore although most of the actors that I have on stage will be speaking Mandarin and all these but because Singapore we don't have a long tradition of acting methods or acting schools so they kind of all come from different backgrounds and really when you look at them they sometimes feel like they're all in different place in different worlds so I find that the training whilst developing a kind of a common language in moving your centre in breathing and in the way we understand the body kind of offer a common language to pull them together so that when I work with my actors they can together conjure a unified world because after all that is what I'm trying to present to the audience on stage whatever world that is that is believable so that helps a lot to get with Viewpoints as well to do that and I think that's the most important part to apply to the work but also this one more thing I was going to say is that moving towards the difficulty having done the training I feel very comfortable telling the actors that so how do you feel about that if they say, yeah, I feel really good I say that try something else and they immediately understand what that instruction meant in a way the syndicate trains when we're in rehearsal every day we usually just do an alphabetical order the first two in the alphabet are going to do Suzuki Mewpoints Day 1 we just rotate through and most of us have are fortunate to have training groups friends that we train with in our homes around the world so that we can train our own in preparation for that but we do not teach the training if people we train with friends who have experience in it and we often cast people who also have experience in it because that's a big home and community and when we're working with someone who does not have training in Suzuki Mewpoints sometimes we will share little tastes and then say if this speaks to you go learn from the source go to a city company or go to a Suzuki company that is how we approach it and do you think about how it relates to the work specifically because it takes us so much work to get into the room together or it just takes a lot of time and planning we don't often have very long to rehearse we've staged entire plays and teched them in two weeks often that's often how we're working it's not ideal but it's possible and the only reason we can do that is because we come into the room and hit the ground and begin training immediately so that we're ready great let's open it out Rich I'm going to put up a video I don't feel like I'm the older person of the room but I've had this struggle of coming in training and being caught up with this passion to go home and share all of this stuff that I just learned and yet having this love-dediable fear in and out and I so there's many teachers in the room so there is no line there's no Ellen didn't hand me machine this weekend talking about this where do you get this this moral authority to be on the stage when do I get the moral authority to go home because believe me the number of people doing Suzuki in Montana is relatively and so I need a group I need a group to train with I want to make that group but then we also talk about the product and I don't want to dilute the product I don't want to bastardize the product I feel good about it I feel but there's a fear and so what so maybe they can speak now or anybody in the room about that fear and wanting to get it right and wanting to not be a part of the problem and then spread that they're all part of the problem and that's where they didn't do something right I think Megan did speak to it a little bit before and I think there's a distinction between the word share and the word teach and so I think the problem there becomes a problem when you do this four weeks at Skidmore and go I know everything and you go back home and you go I'm the authority on the Suzuki training and I know everything because you don't know anything you don't feel like well yeah but if you approach it as like I have a and this is what I first learned as a teacher I got thrown into this classroom and I was like jeez I don't know anything and it's like no I know a little bit more than the people who are taking the class so I'm going to share my knowledge with you and I always say as Megan said before I'm not an expert in this I'm teaching you what I know in the spirit that it was passed on to me and then if you do want some expertise go here go to Toga yeah this is what I'm bringing to you so I think and I've been mulling over this a lot over the years because I have encountered teachers that do say I'm the authority and it's this way and you know you have these guru teachers that and then you go outside of that and you go oh wow that's really not what the training is but I think if you I think that having that doubt in your mind is a good thing for when you go and you share it because you're not saying I'm the expert here it's like this is what it is to me I'm sharing what it is to me but go here go there to get what I have been passed on does that make sense I hope I was thinking about this yesterday when we were training together and someone asked Bando is this written down where is this written down it was so great there are books yeah but there's not something that's going to tell you every piece of the vocabulary or every criteria because it is oral tradition it is passed from person to person and body to body so then if we are passing it on it's up to us to know as much as we can I think what you were saying Maria about about the what is it for is really important to be asking ourselves as we're doing our own work and then especially when we decide to do that transfer I mean personally I think despite that I believe there is a pedagogy to it and I think whether you like it or not you have to spend time seriously looking at the pedagogy because at nine years I always tell them we don't teach anything that we do not know that we do not know enough ourselves in the body so whoever goes out to facilitate or to teach has to go through at least a few years of doing it themselves right and then really seriously trying to figure out a kind of pedagogy that you can deliver the training although body to body but in a clear and kind of yeah with clarity I think so because I do feel that in some way the training can be very easily misunderstood I don't want to be part of that process I can share my experience but when I came first came here in 2008 and I took this program then I did the advanced training the two weeks in August and then I came back and did the winter training I think so I did a couple of weeks basically and when I went back to Italy I was basically the only one who thought about that because it's not something that it's done in my country that I didn't know anybody else who had done it so I thought well I'll gather a couple of friends actors and try to share it I was not trying to teach it so I couldn't but then in the room I realized that what I could share was very difficult maybe it's just the right base idea but then I couldn't and didn't have the tools but okay wrong thank you for coming and I started coming back here at least once a year I would spend a couple of months here and keep training with them and now basically I feel I can teach how to go up and down maybe maybe the old basic number one which is now three eight yeah so I'm going step by step try to slip in little things and see how I do of course trying to take care not only of the training but also the people that are having fun of me Melissa? I've worked right and if you're in a training center and I often felt like that when I was in Houston alone and what I ended up doing was I just I found people I found these amazing yoga teachers and I would practice energy and breath and balance on all of those things in yoga so I would bring it to me and that made me feel like there was some continuity even though my work steps had been broken up I didn't feel so alone so even though and you find people that are they're like minded in a certain way you know they have that sort of this driver to live with more live a life of more integrity than just the day to day you know passing through and that fed me and kind of keeps me whenever I'm away from them and also I think over time I certainly I suspect my colleagues maybe feel this way too as the years go on you have to reify your relationship to the training to you have to keep coming to it to use a hackneyed phrase with beginner's mind you know that's all I wanted to say other questions? I wanted to point out that maybe what leads to being gurus in the room and people that say that I think they know everything is that the way the training as we experience this structure there's one person with the stick telling the others what to do and that's sort of a hierarchical structure so when you bring it out of this context when you don't have a much more expert person in front of you that could tell you what to do with those shoes that's where the problem is because you can't so maybe there's another way to share it by saying I'm not the person that sits facing the rest of you in this together it has to be a dialogue not a top down whoever's leading is really just in dialogue and if you do if you're wanting to find collaborators and share it so you have the common training okay I'm going to go back to Montana and do a week's workshop on charge $500 and after one week I don't know I think it is possible to just get into a group and go okay let's get on the same page I'm going to share this with you that's different let's just have people to train with exactly yes a whole idea of training we had a good fortune to have this company start bringing out a city company many many can do an idea and that's where I got introduced to 9-5 and then to a whole series we recognized the need to train more people so we could have more people to play with so we bring them out of bringing the city company out every other year or so since 2002 I think we've been doing it so that we can ourselves keep training but also now there's so many so many companies and integral artists that are using to defeat all the time that we are the offices you know and that is because we took the responsibility to selfish responsibility and interest to keep our teacher coming to train to train us and our community so you know connect and make it happen in Montana baby wherever you know it can be difficult to get in their schedule but it was a success I have one note on that which is that we knew we knew right away that and we were looking to create more I don't think we were we knew we wanted a larger agriculture and a certain rigor and we were lucky enough we were thinking that we were coming to start dating the city work is the foundation of our work this idea of oh who do I want to learn from if I'm doing a law you're really a little scared for money purposes but it works I'm curious simply what futures you mean or wish are planned that was my last question as company as company yes do you mean long term or short term either dreams, hopes, plans or are you just so busy with present work that it's hard to see the future we have ideas and projects for example Tina is coming to teach at the university in colombia invited by me creating this this pink cullo bond with the university bringing Tina to teach there and also we have a project as company or bunch of friends together to do another project together as well that we plan to have the Americano next year we just got our first grant yeah and yeah for myself I want to be a better producer as well because I found myself as a producer creating this company you know it's like now I have to produce and I used to be really lazy about that my dream is to have a producer yes have money space I used to have to work on television when I met them that's what I say come on guys come to colombia I pet it all you know it means like risky business so we want to keep doing more risky business in this we're trying to go through so yeah I mean to see how I think about it because I say yes we have plans yeah I like to keep building on what we have so we've had a pretty good run we've been invited to festivals the festivals that we've been to have paid us like New York is hard because we're taking a huge risk here and it's not a done thing for us but for me I think to be able to continue this and pay ourselves more than the 50 euros that we've made each and to keep going I think and see what is possible just take more steps and climb the tree exactly of course I think one of the dreams would be to have a space that we could go together I have a in the countryside I have two houses that are basically almost collapsed one doesn't have the roof but it's a place that I own because I inherited from my grandmother and so one of my dreams would be to build a residency there and have a space where people can come and stay I want a wonder comes come to Colombia we'll start there so yeah this is something more maybe more real for me at the moment and I'm trying to understand how but of course the big dream would be to keep working together find a way to keep doing this we want to have a company that supports full-time actors you want to pay them a full-time salary so that they have no excuse which I think shouldn't be that hard because that's how dance companies work anyway and then after that I want a bigger space and then after that I want a theater I don't know how that's going to happen in Singapore but it will happen I think there's so much consumerism going on now that sometimes we are we're being consumed by consumerism and often I'm trying to find ways to not just have my audience consume my art but they can be offered the chance to participate in the discussion of art so we created things like we serve tea to the audience at the end of every performance and I encourage them to stay back and chat with us about anything we give them rum, it's the Colombia way yeah red wine and tea and also for the actors I try to do that as much as possible before every show before we open the door to the audience I get my actors to go to the audience seat, walk the aisles and pick up all the trash in the audience seat because you have to be prepared to welcome the audience into your house so to me it's no difference from the Suzuki training that's why you training the moral authority to be on stage to own that theater and welcome the audience so things like that at the end of the day I think 10 years 20 years down the road I don't want my audience to remember say hey remember 9 years did this really great production or they won this award that to me is not the most important thing but I want them to talk about how 9 years have transformed them how 9 years have shown them that there are other ways to do things there are other ways to create and discuss art in this small island called Singapore I think my three goals hopes and dreams for the syndicate right now are one of our company members is about to have a baby so we're working on childcare for our company members as we are many of us are women identified and many of us may become parents sometime in our future so trying to figure out how to make that happen we have a program called the incubator where we set aside part of our budget every year specifically for our company members to request funds for the first steps of their projects so that can be you can request money to go fly to Juniata and direct a project or you can request help producing help in a project you're working on or if you're writing a play to do a reading whatever my hope is that the incubator will become a program that's not just open to our company but also a way that we can support other artists who might not have access to the institutions that we do have access to so I'm trying to grow that so that you guys will be part of it or we can help support you and the third thing I recently saw Taylor Mac speak a little bit about about their work in the world and Judy Taylor uses the pronoun Judy sometimes Judy said that when when Judy stopped worrying about what New York City could give them as an artist and started worrying about what does New York City need what are the revolutionary spaces that art can create that's when the art got good so I hope that our work will do that as well so we can make little sentences yeah so for the future I hope we can deepen our voices and strides and also that we challenge ourselves to keep asking questions for how to challenge ourselves but also our audience and build up an audience actually that's also an important thing but yeah big dreams and time travel please better internet connections I think they're speaking to all the things but I hope for too and I think when we started we imagined that we were making a commitment that was for a long haul and it's still true and it keeps changing what it looks like from day to day year to year month to month as bodies move through space and time and go back to Chicago and LA and I who knows and so we keep having to reimagine different certain things but for me Megan, yes, spoke to some of these very specific goals and I think that's one thing I'm really proud of as a syndicate under particularly with Megan and Ellie who is our other artistic director Ella Riley kind of like their beautiful leadership when we realized we couldn't all for us a completely hierarchical model was not happening there are these we have concrete things we have plans we have things put in place or things we're we're trying to set up systems that we hope will support us but we're also still nimble and we go like it like well we didn't have an artistic director at first and we were like no that's not how we're going to do or we'll discover this part doesn't work and I think that's one of the gifts of still being and having the space to learn but to me the big thing and being reminded being here is like that's just my dream is that we have a 25th year well speaking of 25th year it's we've made a commitment to each other to go the long haul and it's hard it's beautiful and I need it this weekend to Ellen to get a shot in the arm and I feel so inspired and rejuvenated and moved by all of you and I really needed this so thank you all very much so thank you to our panelists for coming from so far to come in and talk to us thank you for the people on HowlRound who have been watching this conversation thank all of you for asking brilliant questions and for listening intelligently the next one of these will be Suzuki and Anne so we're getting we're ramping up and more training this afternoon Allie has in her hands the tickets your tickets for Trojan Women tonight city company members and partners of city company members