 Hi, everyone. Hello. My name is Chris Thorpe. It's really nice of you to be here, wherever you are. I can't see you, but I'm hoping you can see and hear me. It's a real privilege to be here as one of the clod sessions hosted by Besna and Howl Round. I would encourage you if you're watching this for the first time. I watched quite a lot of the first season of this, and this is now the second season. There are some great artists coming up who I can't wait to see. Please do check out the rest of the programme that's available. For the next, I think it's going to be about 45 minutes. Hopefully I've got my timing right. I'm going to share five pieces of work with you, and I'll briefly introduce them all. Then there will be a short break after that. Then Namisha Patel and Tanuja Amarasariya are going to join us hosted by Niko Vakari from Besna for a discussion that can range across whatever you like. Feel free to ask questions. It doesn't have to be about the work that you've heard. I guess I'll just get on with it. It's nice to be here. The first thing that I'm going to read is a brand new piece that's never been read in public in any form before. It's one of three extracts of the five that are taken from my new show for the Royal Court, which is the Methuin and Royal Court Climate Commission. It's a show that I've been commissioned to write, hopefully for production fairly soon. We'll have to see because obviously the world's a bit screwy at the moment. The show is called Always Maybe The Last Time. It's got a variety of ways of addressing the audience in it, which we'll go into as I go through. But this is the opening. I'm going to have a sip of water because I hydrate in our crazy world. I had this dream. I bear with me. I know nothing's worse than someone telling you about a dream. Apart from something like this, that starts with someone pretending to tell you about a dream that they just invented. Because you immediately start, don't you, by thinking, well, that's a fucking cheat, isn't it? That's a bit fucking lazy. Trying to get away with just saying the thing, the point of the thing, without inviting us all into a world that we can at least make an attempt to believe in. It's a denial of reality right at the start. Leading off by saying this is not only made up, it's not even made up in good faith. I can say what I want because I've already said this is a dream. So not only do the rules of logic of one thing following another not apply, it's also going to be constructed to mean something. It's going to tell us why we're all here without doing us the courtesy of pretending that we're not. It is entirely avoiding the idea of structural craft. Hold your horses though. It's just a dream. It's honestly just a dream. So here it is. The dream that I am pretending to have had. In the dream, there's this polar bear. I'm just fucking kidding. Relax. That will be great, won't it? So, in the dream there's this polar bear and it's made out of graphs, like a million graphs, jagged lines in red and blue and red, mainly red, and the polar bear, it's on fire. Obviously, though, I'm just fucking kidding. And this polar bear is on fire and it's walking through a wooden school building and it's making the building on fire. And so the kids in the building, it's making them on fire too. And all the kids are screaming and the teachers are looking at each other like, well, that's weird. Have you ever seen this polar bear before? And occasionally the teachers, they're bending down to light their fags off of passing child's hair. And outside the school, in the dream, life's just going on as normal. Except it isn't because in everyone's faces there's this look of suppressed panic, distracted thousand-yard stair sort of thing, like their minds are somewhere else. Like they know about the polar bear that's on fire and the kids that are on fire and the teachers who don't seem like they give a fuck. And it's all happening kind of within their sight. It's there on the edge of town. And also, most importantly, it's in earshot. And they're probably wondering about a council meeting, they remember, where a guy from the local lumberyard convinced them, although they can't remember how, that kids learn better in the schools that are made out of wood, which can't have been right. But basically, people are just posting letters and ordering wallpaper and measuring shit and writing down important numbers. And maybe they're also wondering where that polar bear came from, because polar bears aren't native to wherever this is in the dream. I mean, maybe there's a really bad zoo in the next town over. Maybe they're thinking that the idiots who run the zoo in the next town over seem like the kind of people who couldn't keep a polar bear secure, never mind not setting it on fire. But in general, people don't really seem to care about what's going on in the school. Even though they're their kids, man, they're their actual kids. I don't know. I don't know. It's almost like my dream is trying to tell me something. But what? So in the dream in the school by now, the kids are all pretty much on fire. I mean, there's a couple of lucky ones. Maybe they're hiding in a supply cupboard. Maybe the school's got a swimming pool, but mainly the kids are all on fire. The refugee kids went on fire first. Maybe refugees have petrol for blood or something. Basically all the kids who were from somewhere else, they went first. But, you know, all that's kind of academic now. No pun intended, because apart from a couple of kids who've managed to get into the swimming pool or the supply cupboard, probably two white kids. I mean, not like the only two white kids, obviously. Most of those are on fire as well by this point. But apart from these two kids who'll be on fire soon anyway, all the kids are on fire. The little fuckers aren't dying though, bless them. They're just running around. They're screaming. They're maybe bubbling a bit. The poor ones, the ones who have clothes made man-made fibres, they're maybe bubbling a little bit more. So the school starts to collapse now in the dream. The kids, they're all running out into the street. They're waving their little arms. They're running down the street. And people are starting to take notice now, I guess, because it's getting hard to ignore, you know. There are kids on fire in the post office and all the front gardens like a flock of fucking demented starlings or the monies on fire in the bureau de Champs, even the pounds. Or the television licences. And the packages in the post office waiting to be collected, even the ones in the Amazon lockers outside. You know, the kids are properly bumping into people's cars. And one of them, a little girl, even manages to get as far as the 24-hour garage. Now that is dangerous, obviously, on account of all the flammable liquid that's stored there. And the people who work there in the garage, they kind of half-heartedly pour sand onto the little girl out of the fire bucket, but he doesn't do much good. And then the whole thing just goes up in a fireball. And the kids, the kids are all screaming, like, help us, help us. But most people are still just... Well, a lot of them are on fire too by now. Most of them are just wandering around, and there's fucking half-melted pot noodles from the garage scattered all over the town. And then the dream. The dream I'm telling you about. End. I mean, it's one of those dreams that seems to have gone on a bit too long, like maybe one or two minutes too long. But eventually, one of the adults, who's by now pretty much consumed by fire, even though they don't really seem aware of it, turns to another one and says, was that us? You know, the thing with the polar bear being on fire? Did we do that? And then the dream ends. Anyway, it's not that. That's not even the dream I'm pretending to have had. It would be great if that was actually how this started. If I thought that telling you that story was going to change your mind, that would be fucking hilarious. So that was the opening of Always Maybe The Last Time, which, like I said, is the new Climate Commission for the Royal Court. Or maybe was the new Climate Commission for the Royal Court, because maybe someone from the Royal Court is watching this right now and thinking, no way you're doing that in my fucking fear, mate. But we'll see. This is the second extract from Always Maybe The Last Time. It's a very different voice from the first extract, which was the one about the polar bears and all the kids being on fire. I've imagined that this show is performed in many different ways by a large group of people. So I guess that first extract was, I imagine it has been in a voice that could be very much like mine. This one, I don't know, but it probably won't be me doing it. This morning, I said goodbye to my kid as she left to go to school. It was the last time I will do that. I took the bus to work. I boiled a kettle in the break room to make tea, and it was the last time I will do that. I checked my emails on my phone, and it was the last time I will do that. I sat in a bar and watched a woman at the same table order and eat some sweet potato fries that came in a wire basket with small metal pots of mayo and ketchup, and I listened to her talk, and I watched and I watched until all the mayo and the fries were gone, but the ketchup stayed untouched. It was the last time I will do that. I read an article online about the political views of a stand-up comedian, and it was the last time I will do that. I watched the first scene of a 1970s screwball comedy out of nostalgic curiosity, and it was the last time I will do that. I heard music broadcast on the radio, and it was the last time I will do that. I cared about something happening in another country because I heard about something happening in another country, and it was the last time I will do that. I watered a plant that I had made exist just so I could look at it, and it was the last time I will do that. I sat on some steps by a grating. I listened to a tube station announcement as it drifted through the air vents, and it was the last time I will do that. I considered my dating options, and it was the last time I will do that. I sat with my husband and we exchanged a glance, and that glance said only, I am glad we are in this room together, and nothing fearful, and it was the last time I will do that. I sat and watched a young man try out some poetry in a cafe, and it was the last time I will do that. I paid in cash, and it was the last time I will do that. I woke up because of the rubbish lorry, and it was the last time I will do that. I thought about Kate Bush, and it was the last time I will do that. I slept with the heating on, and it was the last time I will do that. I saw sushi, and it was the last time I will do that. I saw a frog in the park by the bus stop, and it was the last time I will do that. I saw the traffic part for an ambulance, and it was the last time I will do that. I wondered about whether I should get a pension, and it was the last time I will do that. I decided to buy one of two fractionally different kinds of biscuits, and I took time over that decision weighing its pros and cons, because it felt in the moment important, and it was the last time I will do that. I saw a friend and their children, and when we parted, I was certain I would see them again, and all would be well, and their family would be whole, and it was the last time I will do that. I cut my finger and stopped thinking about the possibilities of infection almost immediately, and it was the last time I will do that. I regretted for a moment that I don't have kids, and it was the last time I will do that. I gave money to charity, and it was the last time I will do that. I looked down at the city street from my office window without thinking this is madness, this is incomprehensible madness to live like this, and it was the last time I will do that. I chose to learn something for pleasure, and it was the last time I will do that. I thought about the kids I knew when I was a kid, and the long days inventing things to do started going down over the wasteland near the derelict railway bridge, and it was the last time I will do that. I let my gaze run across a building for the pleasure of the architecture rather than wondering where, if anywhere there were hidden people watching me, and it was the last time I will do that. I knew in my bones that violence of any saw is an unacceptable way of securing the things you want in daily life, and it was the last time I will do that. I trusted war, and it was the last time I will do that. I did not know the meaning of the words, clathrate, deposit, and it was the last time I will do that. I wondered how immune I am to advertising, and to what extent I just think I'm immune, and how the belief that your immune manipulation makes you incredibly susceptible to certain techniques of manipulation, and it was the last time I will do that. I unthinkingly trusted that a string of numbers on my phone represented in any meaningful way a specific set of resources I could somehow have real-world access to if I wanted, and it was the last time I will do that. I believe the system might change, but ultimately will not fail, and it was the last time I will do that. I saw nobody die, and it was the last time I will do that. I knocked on the window of a cafe because a friend walked past, and it was the last time I will do that. I bled that stupid fucking radiator in the bedroom, and it was the last time I will do that. I waited for my laptop to boot up, and it was the last time I will do that. I shut the door behind me and knew that the room I just walked into was mine, and it was the last time I will do that. I had the option to sit and think about all this rather than to live in it, and it was the last time I will do that. All of these things I just said to you, all of them, they will be true. Perhaps not on the same day, but they will all be true. Start to grieve. Do it consciously, systematically. Because so much grief takes practice, it takes rehearsal, and you cannot do it all at once. And when the time comes, when all this collapses, it can't be so sad that there's no fucking sushi, your ability to help people disappears. It's the sadness that will make us cruel, the inability to deal with so much of it at once, and maybe the best way we've got to prepare for all this going is to act like it's already gone. So we've got two more extracts. This next one's quite short, and it's probably about ten years old. It's the oldest thing that I'm reading, and it's the final speech from a play that I wrote called There Has Possibly Been an Incident. It plays about how everyone thinks on some level that the decisions they make are the right ones, and it tells various stories of people who caused damage or did, in one case, an absolutely terrible thing, but thought that they were doing the right thing at the time. One of the strands in it is about a guy who commits a terrorist attack on a parliament building and some young people because of his beliefs about his culture being threatened and about how he nevertheless thinks of himself as a hero. So this final speech kind of describes the action that that man talked about from the perspective of someone who, for me, makes the only really heroic decision in the play because they simply react to the events that are unfolding in front of them in a way that attempts to make them better. At the end of the play, this is the speech that all three performers give at the same time in unison. When I've actually been in this, I stepped in a couple of times. I'm really glad there's just me here because it is a really fucking difficult thing to be asked to do in absolutely simultaneously with other people. So yeah, this is the ending of There Has Possibly Been an Incident. He comes across the floor of the entrance lobby. Of course, at that point, I don't know it's him. He's dressed as a woman. His face is covered. He looks like nothing out of the ordinary. I don't mean this to be dismissive. It's just that when you see a lot of people, it really takes something particular for one of those people to stand out. His face, his body's hidden. I guess it was a costume. He was pretending, wasn't he, to be something he wasn't. I can't believe now that I thought this, but I think the gunshots and music, drums and hand claps. I'm trying to remember if there's, I don't know, some kind of performance scheduled or a demonstration. Some of them can be pretty out there, pretty weird. You don't know what it is they're actually upset about until you think about it, unpick it a bit. Sometimes not even then. Of course, it's not really my job to understand it. It's something that goes on where I work. I think the falling people, mostly children, I think it's dancing. I think the falling people are dancers. Of course, this doesn't last more than seconds. I see what's going on. And the strange thing, the strange thing is, it is as if he's dancing, the black cloak or whatever that he's wearing billows out around him. It's a beautiful piece of architecture where I work. High, wide, it reflects on and on. It's got these ribs. It's a bit like being in a whale skeleton, a bit like being in a station. But it feels like the kind of place where important things get done. So in that space it sounds important when the first grenade goes off. The teenager lands in front of me and spills all over the floor and I am running, clearing broken chair. He stands over a girl in a blue denim dress and I hope his concentration is so total. He neither fires again or looks up before I get there. I think, I hope that I might not have though, I probably, there was probably no thought. I should have been thinking of my own daughter. As I ran towards the girl, I maybe should have been thinking of my own daughter, imagining her in that situation, but if I'd started thinking of her, of my own daughter, I would have stopped. I know I would have stopped. Because in that situation is this girl in the blue denim dress isn't my daughter and that would have stopped me, I think. I think I shouted. It's true, anyone would have done. Anyone would have done what I did in the same situation. I honestly believe that. I have to believe that. I shouted. He turned towards me. Between us at this point there is a table. There are two teenagers under the table. I think one of them is already dead. I jumped the table from this point on. After he has turned towards me, after I start my jump over the table, from the moment my feet leave the floor, we have eye contact. There's no surprise. He isn't surprised to see me. It's like I'm an expected part of the situation, a factor he's already considered, a mechanic of the game. Someone will always do this. This is a weird thought. Why am I thinking of my daughter? I don't have any children. Immediately following now, another thought, it doesn't matter. I don't have any children and it doesn't matter because children are children. Nothing makes these children special. Nothing would make my children if I had them more special than these. It doesn't matter. I was flying over the table, arms stretched out towards him when he finally shot me. Two bullets. Two bullets equals three fingers and an eye. It's not a bad sum. Two bullets take three fingers, one eye and my momentum carries me onto him and we fall and his gun falls and I am holding onto him with my one good hand, ramming my forehead into his face over and over and suddenly there are other arms on him and on me. I dream about that. It wasn't what I did or at least it was only what I did first. I had the opportunity. In that sense, I was lucky but without those other arms it would have been impossible. The girl, but she was the last one that day. She was the last one to die and I did that. I stopped it. Not on my own and too late but I did that. At least I did that. This is the final piece of the reading. It's the third extract from the Royal Court Climate Commission play. Again, never been read before in public. It's what I think will be probably the ending. Sorry this has run slightly long because we had to repeat something but I hope everyone's been able to hear and see. I'm going to just zip through this final one which is the last bit of always, maybe the last time. It's okay. Let me send you away with some hope. Hope looks forward but it draws its energies from the past from knowing histories including our victories and their complexities and imperfections. It means not being the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten and part of what happens is up to us. Where does that leave us when the future is written? I started this with a dream, an invented dream but all dreams are invented. So here's another. You, me, all of us were sitting in an old building in a city, a building built by the richest people in that city at a time when its architecture was the pinnacle of the available technology. Built to last, huge dark rooms that were lit first by candles and artfully cut glass lenses then by gas, then by electricity but the rooms themselves in that building have never changed. They're so much bigger than the people in them, than us. And in this room, this huge room with its floor length windows that let in light and let out heat so we have to put so much energy in them to keep them warm. These rooms in which physics itself work to remind the occupants of the huge riches in a literal sense the excess that allowed them to exist. We are sitting around this room in these really old, really comfortable chairs. Let's not worry too much right now about how the room got there. The important thing is it exists. Let's not worry about whose labour paid or unpaid, whose energy whose exploitation and coercion got it there. Or rather let's recognise that all rooms like this one are built on slavery and coercion. At least the ones as old as this one is. But this is the room we have and we're all in it. What do we do in the room? We wait. We read newspapers that appear on the carved darkwood side tables distributed around the darkwood floor. A table for each group of four leather-bound chairs facing inwards. Wing-backed leather-bound chairs with the leather fastened to them with buttons that stretch it and create this regular pattern of dimples. You know the pattern that says luxury but old luxury. They're going to stop doing that whether that technique is called with the buttons and the leather on chairs. It's a skill we are going to lose it is superfluous. But that particular thing I think it will still fascinate people that we don't do it anymore. And in the room we read the newspapers and we wait. None of us know how many chairs there are in the room. It's a long room lost in distance in either direction along its length. The windows seem to go on forever. But they don't. Probably don't. We're all just sitting around in these beautiful chairs in the old imperial architecture waiting to die. Sitting around on beautiful chairs in these grand old rooms. The high ceilings above us the polished darkwood floors bouncing our words up and around to make them sound important. We know something's happening outside. Outside there is struggle and such an effort straining every human sinew to find new ways that will keep enough of us alive for long enough to build an alternative to this room, this building. But we sit reading the paper looking at the shapes of old maps in frames on the walls as if the lines drawn on those maps were laws like physics and not just the product of years of human belief filtered through momentary decisions. But there's a noise outside and the noise outside gets louder and louder until the walls shake until bone china made with some stolen manufacturing process falls to a floor made of stolen hardwood and shatters until the latches on those huge windows shake themselves free and eventually someone gets up and walks on the now heaving floor to the nearest window they throw the shutters open to look down into the street and up over the roofs of the buildings opposite which are the only horizon most of us really know and in the sky above that stone canyon in the cruel blue sky someone has pushed the last remaining engines of one of the last operational passenger flights to their limit we can't hear the passengers screaming at this distance but they have wrestled those human lives in that archaic metal tube to divide gravity for one last time and across the sky with the exhaust of that final aeroplane they have written this they've written this is how the movie ends a bunch of people of no qualification that has been granted by a recognised body of an extant country sits silently by a lake that is half the size it used to be those people have no access to the other similar groups that exist at the same time across the world maybe those other groups aren't by lakes maybe they're in repurposed school gym halls or religious buildings that fell into disuse maybe they're sheltering under outcrops of ancient rock or in city centre parks maybe there's already a wide band encircling the world where people cannot be at all but these people have bought something here maybe they've bought an object maybe not maybe they've bought the record of a process or the demonstration of a skill each of them carry something like that and alongside it they carry this deep acceptance of their own death of the fact of their own death and the knowledge that their own death doesn't really matter this group of people by the lake though they sit like all the other groups maybe they take in their surroundings I mean people are still moved by beauty there is still beauty they take in the mountains that surround the lake on three sides the broken and rocky bowl that has not supported ice for years bare on the upper slopes but still some green clinging to the lower where the lake sure used to be maybe there's birdsong there is probably still birdsong there is probably still beauty there is probably still even a stream somewhere feeding water into the lake a trickle compared to what it used to be but it is still there sometimes there used to be fish here too there probably still are but who knows for how long on the grey beach that for thousands of years was lake bed but for a few short years has been just a grey beach these people they use sticks and small stones to carve out a grid system in the dry earth a pattern of squares not too many squares maybe twice as many squares as there are people and slowly over the course of a day taking frequent rests and sharing out the food and water they've carried up here into the mountains the people take turns to explain the things they've bought a piece of old technology a set of instructions for shepherding a seed into a plant and a plant into a crop a way of resolving an argument before it escalates into violence a hand powered generator attached to a hard drive and a home built speaker maybe some of the objects are even dark jokes like instructions on how to make half remembered things that won't be made again like ice cream each person explains what they have chosen to bring here and why and if the group decides to allow it which they mostly do the object or record or process is given one of the squares to sit in and when everything has its place and every square that's going to be filled is filled the group walk around almost like they might have in an old museum or a picture they're looking at what they've decided to keep and I guess they're mourning everything they've decided not to and inoculating themselves against returning to the things they've left behind at the same time they don't know if this will work they probably most of them wish it hadn't got to this point they also know that things were at this point the point where doing this was a necessary step a lot earlier than they were prepared to admit if they come round to it earlier they might have saved more but there it is at least they've made a choice at least they've made a choice rather than being the other people the ones who sat around in old rooms watching each other die not even realising they were doing it so that might be the end of the new show who knows it's definitely the end of this reading and thank you for thank you for being here and thank you for listening we're going to take a we're going to take a five minute break now and then Nico from Bersinham Theatre he's going to take over and be joined by Ita Nugir and Nimisha and we're going to have a conversation I just want to say as well as like it's been great to be able to share this with you this is a free event but if you look on the event page on Bersinham's website there are links if you feel inclined to donate to two organisations one is the Trussell Trust who are responsible for providing a lot of the food bank provision here in the UK and do a lot of great work doing that and the other one is Detention Action who are a small charity again based in the UK dedicated to supporting people who are in immigration detention but also campaigning for the end of deaf immigration detention and a reform of the system that allows it okay I'm going to switch my camera off for five minutes now and we're going to have a little five minute break Good evening everyone and welcome back to the second edition of GLOD political theatre as a civil rights a fortnightly online platform presenting political theatre from around the world hosted by Howround Creative Theatre Commons My name is Nico Volcari I'm a co-artistic director and co-founder of Bersinham Theatre a British Romanian political theatre collective committed to using theatre to investigate, expose and confront institutional and normalised violence Thank you so much for joining us for our first event and thank you to the forever inspiring crystal from Manchester in the UK for the incredible reading tonight and thank you to everyone who joined us for your patience with the technical issues at the beginning of the streaming I do want to just remind everyone that those who missed the beginning that the whole of tonight's event will be available on the Howround website to watch whenever you want along with all the other GLOD events and yes thank you again Chris for such an engaging and striking reading for tonight's discussion we are joined by two wonderful panellists who I'd like for you to both introduce yourself so can we start with you please Sure, hi everyone My name is Anisha Patel I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm based in London in the UK and most of my work actually is with survivors of gross human rights violations so that's good about me Thank you and welcome to you, Anisha and Tunisia Hi, I'm Tunisia, I'm from Syria I'm a director and a sound designer I work across different art forms including theatre and I'm based in Bristol in the UK Thank you, welcome Tunisia So amongst many of the concepts and ideas interrogated and the extracts Chris shared with us tonight one in particular that stood out to me was concerning apathy and precipity of the individual or of the collective So to start us off my first question is for you Nimesia I was wondering whether from a clinical psychology and human rights perspective you could contextualise the mechanisms of apathy and precipity when facing disasters or social political violences I mean I think that's a really good question to kick us off already because it sort of pinpoints I suppose it points to the kind of underlying processes beneath apathy and precipity and their different things and sometimes we conflate them but they are actually different so for me apathy is a sort of state of indifference and it's not static as a state we move in and out of apathy but it is a kind of disconnect from compassion compassion for the other and sometimes I think it's a reflection of our own privilege individualist values am I alright or as long as I'm alright and sometimes things that we see or we hear about in terms of sociopolitical disasters or violence they feel like they're so far away from our own lives and preoccupations and I think TV does that somehow as well you can kind of watch it and also when it gets a bit too much you can kind of channel hop just like touch of a button and it's gone out of your room, out of your consciousness and you can distance yourself from that feeling that it brings up and I think that's kind of apathy the sort of ability and the privilege to be able to flick a button and say I don't need to see this I don't want to see this I don't want to feel this but I think precipity is something different or maybe it's just a kind of a reflection what we see of apathy it's the sort of non-action the absence of any kind of resistance or absence of any kind of action it's a kind of retreat into inaction and it's about most of the time I think it's about feeling overwhelmed it's about feeling helpless sometimes it's about fear sometimes it's about feeling confused and with all of that sort of feeling overwhelmed you kind of do nothing and I do think that it's sometimes about self-preservation you know and sometimes it's about often I suppose I'm talking about it let me just unpack that just to say there are two ways of thinking about it because I think if we're living in in in context where we are privileged on many many dimensions it's easier easier to be passive it's easier to be apathetic or indifferent it's a privilege to be indifferent in fact in fact but when these these or disasters are part of your everyday life the injustices, the inequalities all of that you feel the effects of it on a daily daily basis what we might sometimes see as passivity is not inaction or passivity it's actually just fatigue it's that chronic overwhelming fatigue and what appears as indifference is actually a kind of fatigue and detachment sometimes it's a way of coping because if you kind of resist and you get pushback even more or there are appraisals or other negative impacts you are even worse off it costs you something to be active so passivity is actually for me sometimes a form of form of resistance but I think in our kind of more privileged existence I think passivity is about not wanting to give up something what do we have to give up if you're really going to engage in action you have to give up something you have to give up time you have to give up energy and you have to give up some of your privilege so I think there are some of the issues that go on and they do vary according to the context in which we live thank you for that absolutely at least personally when I was listening to Chris's reading this evening and when I was reading the extracts a few days ago all of those elements were incredibly present for me and this particular idea of not wanting to give up something and this state of indifference that was I saw that as my own kind of experience as well being in Britain and my own kind of a history looking back at my own relationship with do I do something do I not before I move on I just wanted to ask you Namisha whether there are obviously nuances in what you've just described according to different cultures different nations states etc and I was just wondering whether there's anything specific to mention regarding passivity and apathy within the British context any specific nuances yeah that's a look I think it's complicated because we live I think in the UK in a society within a history of immense privilege that's being gained by calculated and kind of systematic mass exploitation and brutality by other peoples it came with a price that other people paid and yet today we still have so many social inequalities in our own context people that maybe if you're not living here people wouldn't would finding incredible we have child poverty we have fuel poverty how is it possible in a kind of seemingly affluent country that we can have such gross injustices and inequalities and I think in that if you think about that I think is that about apathy is that about passivity I don't think so I think it goes back to privilege it goes back to the function of power because we fiercely fiercely guard that privilege and that's those inequalities still persist I don't think it's kind of by default there is an active choice to preserve privilege and I don't think if we're talking about people in general or not wanting to generalise I don't think we could say the British people are apathetic or passive and I think we only have to look at more recent movements such as Extinction Rebellion or Me Too Black Lives Matter and you know they kind of show us something that there isn't indifference and that people have had enough they've had enough of indifference they've had enough of inequalities and injustices and also I think social media is a really powerful tool for us right particularly I think in kind of what I was going to say younger generations because I'm not on social media but it is it is a really powerful tool so it somehow feels easier to to challenge apathy on the other hand it's also easier for people to be armchair activists right it's really quick and easy to send a five word tweet but never do anything never actually make any difference and people think that tweeting is kind of that's their bit so that's I think really frustrating for me but I think I'm hopeful about younger generations because I think there's a fire there's a fire burning sorry to use the metaphor that you used Chris as well but in a different way but I do think there's a kind of real fire of fighting against indifference like they've had enough and quite rightly so quite rightly so and that gives me hope so I don't I think it's I think we're in a place where we can choose we can choose to do something differently Chris and Tanuja, is there anything you'd like to add to that? It's so interesting to hear you speak in relation and that this kind of your the way you kind of so beautifully expressed that the kind of your proposition of the difference between apathy and passivity is being around kind of notions of of connection and disconnection I think is really helpful because this I was thinking a lot during your reading Chris about choice and about how we kind of understand the responsibility of our choices and this notion of like doing our best and what does it mean to do your best and I think that's really linked to this idea of privilege and power and the notion that doing your best is enough and this is a kind of lack of imagination I guess for thinking beyond the best that you know you can do and I think and I guess the other thing that I've been thinking about in relation to that sort of perhaps riffing off a little bit the idea of how exhausting it can feel to like to feel like you have to to take action on everything the sort of the scale of some of the crises we're meeting is like it isn't always any it isn't something that only one person can change but that kind of you know the idea of needing like everyone needing to take leadership in their own in their own selves but to kind of remembering that we are a community and that that is an accumulation that is really powerful is interesting but also kind of are there ways to understand action that doesn't look like the way that we tend to expect action to look because I think there's a lot of there's the idea that that resistance should be visible in certain ways or can be noticed in certain ways and is performed in certain ways and I wonder whether there are different ways to understand action that might help us kind of see different types of collective action I guess in places that we're not noticing it and through that maybe we can kind of take a different kind of energy and push towards different types of hope. Thank you for that yeah that's really interesting this idea of resistance as a performance and actually whether I guess it comes down to the idea whether what the intentions are behind that type of resistance or that active resistance whether they're hollow or they're sincere and I guess at least to a part that actually that makes it a lot more significant and actually impactful for actually what they're claiming to what the act is claiming to fight for and to resist against I guess before I move on to the next question Chris did you have anything you wanted to add to that? I found both of those answers to be fascinating normally I suppose from a specific point of view of like someone who's engaged in particularly at the moment in a process about thinking about not just how theatre can make people active but whether it it should be trying whether it's the right thing for it to be trying to do whether it's not a kind of it's really useful to have that insight into you know the the different kinds of inactivity the different flavours of inactivity that it's useful to imagine that you're helping but you're identifying and encouraging people to kind of come out of because I've always I've got more and more suspicious particulars I've done more thinking and writing around the whole climate crisis I've become more and more suspicious of the idea that theatre can be in any way an effective rallying cry or kind of call to arms or revolution but I've become more and more convinced that one of the things it can do is identify the workings of the human mind you know the underlying structures and ways of dealing with the world and information that stop those things from happening and at least sending people away with an enhanced awareness of if they're not doing it why they're not doing it and maybe try and get in through that way I totally agree with them your ideas about privilege the kind of unwillingness to confront the situation that we could be in in any active way for most people in this country is a kind of self damaging result of privilege you know the idea that we've never that there's a there's a lot of people in this country who've never had to really consider the precarity of the frameworks that gave them the privilege to not consider those frameworks is you know is kind of the is kind of the enemy that I'd like to be fighting rather than making work that says get out on the streets and do you know do something about it because I think there are actually more effective ways to encourage people to do that than fear yeah That is absolutely fascinating and I'm actually very curious Chris if you don't mind like explaining a little bit more about this kind of journey that you've been on and the thoughts that what provoked you to think about how maybe theatre is unable to or maybe shouldn't be at all to rally the people that actually identify maybe something more nuanced that's fascinating because I love I'm still in love with the idea and the dream that actually theatre can rally people and can intimidate politicians and the established judgment but I'd love to hear more about like kind of that process for you Yeah I suppose that's it's not it's not really phrased in a way that's helpful for you as a kind of activist theatre maker is it and I certainly didn't mean that there isn't value in doing the kind of thing that bears in the doors of you know shining a light on the injustices of the world and giving people very clear pathways to follow if they want to do something about that there is of course a huge amount of value in that but I don't think a lot of theatre does it in that way I think we I think there's a there's a kind of feeling that the you know the literary power of our storytelling or our skill and craft that kind of the construction of allegory or you know the story the story that we try to energise people with of a world in a hundred years time when everything's under water or whatever is somehow has this has a power in in and of itself that will I mean I'm talking specifically about climate when I talk about this I'm not talking about immigration detention I'm not talking about the arms industry I'm not talking about all these things that you know that you deal economic and equality things that you deal with although obviously none of those things they're all connected to each other but I'm talking about the something that you I think you don't do which is story as activism you know narrative as activism character as activism I don't think those things are necessarily as effective as we think they are and I think taken advantage of the fact that it's a quiet collective space in which to show people the world but also more importantly show them how their minds process the world and say why are we so bad at doing anything about we evidently know no one walks into a theatre to a show about climate change not knowing that it's happening I really honestly don't think that's the case I would say for most theatres the vast majority of the audience walking not only knowing that it's happening but knowing a lot of how it's happening and why it's happening and being of the opinion that it is a bad thing that it is happening so why the fuck tell them a story that encourages them to get them out on the street or shows them a possible dark future that is designed to kind of make them those things when they already are those things when they walk in why not take advantage of the fact that you've got a bunch of people uniquely uniquely among art funds in a collective space where you can ask them to in real time feel the way that their minds are working around these subjects and not just what the subjects are so I don't think it's I don't think I'm being down on activist theatre and I probably didn't choose my words with much care but what I am what I am down on is activist story or activist speeches I think there are better ways to achieve those things that aren't necessary that can be done in different ways than theatre doesn't I couldn't agree with you more and it's a question with those of us that we're constantly grappling with part of me still feels with every show that we do or that we dream what are the components that didn't quite get us there in the last show where can we take it next what is missing and I couldn't agree with you Morris and again from what I took from what you just said again moving away from story narrative and character and I totally agree with that there's a lot of things to unpack there as well but for me I think just from what my understood from what you said as well is like engaging the audience with their minds to put it quite crudely I guess like getting them to put A, B and C together and getting them to think for themselves and not feeding them the horror at least I think that's the heart of a lot of effect of political theatre practice which is getting the audiences to engage in the dialectic to get them to engage in the argument themselves as opposed to just being spoon fed and I kind of wanted to ask you to show as well as like a director drama tug and sound designer how do you feel about how do you feel about this what are your thoughts and what have you grappled with yeah it's interesting so I've never called myself an activist because I mean though I campaign on certain things I certainly don't I feel like to call myself an activist would be it would just be a lie because I don't spend all that time doing that doing that work and I really agree with Chris maybe it's going to be like a similar age or jaded in the same way but that kind of those that theatre is not it's a space filled with with people who are trying to do good things a lot of the time but it's not the place that that action always happens so I think there are two things about that I definitely think that theatre because theatre is a it's a constructed space so it can be a really great place to examine structures and environments and how we behave and think and respond to those structures and environments and I've certainly seen work that has kind of really pushed at that in a way that it's kind of really like forced the audience to attend to their own behaviours in those situations but I think it can also be yeah absolutely a space to to kind of reflect on our intellectual behaviours but there's also I think it just sort of I was thinking about the kind of the questions around ideas of story and narrative and character I work a lot with imaginative fiction and I was just sort of trying to think about what are the approaches that I'll often take in relation to kind of like political issues and issues that are like real world concerns and I think there's potentially a space to as well as the kind of intellectual attention that's required there's something that story can do that can be about understanding the emotional consequences of these massive problems because again in sort of like getting people to care getting people to see that this is our problem and that to think that it's not happening to me is just like that's just a lie and I do think sometimes finding surprising ways into revealing those emotional consequences is can be a valuable way of like getting under people's skin with these things. I think a lot of the time that that aspiration is applied to things that are actually just the writer spouting their own opinions and statements and that's not really what it's doing but if you can get beyond that in a way that invites audiences to care or to in a way that they haven't been asked to before then I think that can be quite powerful absolutely and I think that just takes us further doesn't it down this line of what I get so if we put into the context of the climate catastrophe so there's a thing when we've done shows on, when we've done one show a while ago now Vinovata about capitalism and the climate crisis when we were researching there's this I can't remember the actual phrase now but there's kind of like this like void that a lot of activists or researchers enter the first time that they're actually looking at the issue head on and they're actually understanding and from a lot of all the different kind of like subjects and issues and violences that we can do a show about or to explore it seems that this idea of the catastrophe the climate catastrophe seems to be deeply overwhelming and I guess so Chris did you have that experience like what was your experience like like working on a show about the climate catastrophe that's a big question sorry but I think that's going to help contextualise some of the food questions it wasn't the subject I was interested it wasn't the subject I was uninterested in but obviously writing about it requires a bit more than being interested in it and again, yeah it was terrifying absolutely terrifying and but again it's about that if you think about it it's a void that you go into a kind of void which can be trigger the kind of inactions that Anish is talking about partly because you have the luxury actually day by day at the moment of not really caring about it that much where I live then you can either you know I'm much more interested what I became much more interested in is talking about I always talk about it I don't really think of it as a void but something that I talk about when I talk to people about writing a lot is like the most effective writing the most effective theatre for me is if you imagine theatres are like a bucket of water and your water is your content I'm far more interested in making like making work about the shape of the bucket you know so that void is a delineated thing that has those thoughts around it that prevents you from getting to it or paralyzes you when you're in it or you know it's actually much I found it much more useful to kind of look at the structures around that fear and acknowledge that I was I was scared and I was passive and I was terrified the more I learned but also you know also what impulses that then gives you to look in other places for things that are going to reassure you or to try and take the line of least resistance when it comes to things that you can do to mitigate that or mitigate the situation and not really think about what is really effective but think about what is reassuring it's not about then standing up and saying ok so like to be effective you have to do this this and this and this it's about using the opportunity to say isn't it interesting that this is the reaction and perhaps if we think about the reaction and the way we're thinking we think about the bucket and not the water you know how can we better equip ourselves to kind of maneuver around those thought processes and think about actually how we think and how we can make the way we think useful do you see what I mean probably in a way that's really useful but yeah the short answer is I was fucking terrified and I think it's probably it's and of course I'm terrified of the worst consequences and they might not happen but the most effective things to do is to assure that they will because if you prepare for them happening then you're if you're prepared for the worst that could happen then you've got full spectrum preparedness if it's not as bad if it turns out not to be as bad but then we bear in mind that like if you look at the you know in the early 90s the climate predictions the first big round of climate predictions were the appendix that effectively said now scientifically we probably should say that these consequences are possible but we're putting them into the appendix because they're really really fucking unlikely but in 25 years this is the kind of thing that might be happening and it's everything in that appendix that's happening now so you know in those terms there probably is good reason to actually think about what the worst could possibly be because the worst of 30 years ago is is in some ways what's happening now and even even if I think about it right now and you know I try to engage as much as possible in the idea of the climate crisis and what I can do as an individual but even thinking about it now in this discussion I can feel almost like that physical not in me of like wanting to refuse to engage with it because it is terrifying and whether I'm in Romain or the UK I do see physically as opposed to also politically and economically the consequences of what is happening around us and Namisha I was wondering whether you've got anything you'd like to add to this idea of maybe you've got any reflections on how fit is role in like provoking awareness and maybe trying to ignite some sense of responsibility or inspiration or kind of like some argument or intellectual or engagement with our own passivity, our own apathy I was listening really carefully to what you were saying Chris as well and found myself slipping into a kind of hopelessness so I'm going to resist that and not because I think because I think I connected with a lot of what you were saying and I guess my own doubts as well I think the first thing to say is that I personally think theatre is an incredibly powerful tool for lots of lots of things I think at the most kind of first level not basic level is its capacity to just touch it just transports us into a space where we allow ourselves as the audience to be touched to be moved and to not defend in the way that we might in our living rooms and you know flick channel hop for you go away and make apathy or whatever it forces you to somehow stay there and to be to be open having said that I think it's useful in that is it useful in raising awareness I'm not so sure about that because I think again the point you made Chris you know I think who is the audience who are the people who who watch this who are the people who are interested in these issues it's usually the converted and you know it can kind of become a bit of an echo chamber and you also almost sort of feel like you can pat yourself on the back because you've gone to see a bit of political theatre but actually that's not what you're looking for right it's not just the kind of patting each other on the back so raising awareness I'm not so sure I think it could be much more or I've seen it be I guess more powerful and effective when it reaches audiences that wouldn't ordinarily want to hear or feel these feelings or hear these issues but I think in terms of whether it can mobilise people into action that's another matter so I think there's one about theatre that's really helpful and powerful in touching and moving is it helpful in awareness raising when it depends how you do it and where you do it and who you're doing it with is it effective in shifting people really shifting people I mean that's a whole different conversation which I have a lot of thoughts on but that's I do wonder whether this idea of the effectiveness of theatre's ability to mobilise people changes at least as we spoke earlier as well with the nuances of like when the theatre in different countries you know like we can't if we contextualise it a little bit in different countries I wonder whether people react differently and have a different relationship like certainly working between the UK and Romania the audiences are very different Romania in Romania you generally get a lot more politicised people because of the recent history and lots of other aspects as well to consider and I always find it so strange and I've been remaining for a very long time and I go back to the UK and go to the theatre and the audiences are just so different so different and again on this question Chris I was wondering whether I could talk a little bit about in your work and how you and your own relationship as an artist with the audience so for me since I've always seen your work now there's always a direct and clear relationship with the audience and this relationship always has a very lasting effect I mean I can remember years ago when I saw at the Soho there's possibly been an incident and that experience still stays with me it wasn't just something materialistic it wasn't something hollow a hollow experience that kind of I forgot about that was a very special moment and it really stayed with me and my question for you is in two parts first of all for you why is this direct and almost familiar relationship if I can call it that with the audience important and B how does this relationship coincide with another striking strand that I felt that ran through all of the extracts you've read tonight which is the relationship between the older generations the adults to put it like that and the younger and the future generations which I feel is a really important question to interrogate I didn't realise until I fought for you through it tonight I suddenly went oh fucking hell all these loads of this is about kids going to school which is so weird I haven't made that link which is not something that I'm personally involved with at the moment I mean obviously I have friends that go on about the argument in the street about opinion or gland is kind of a true story that comes from a friend of mine that I stole but well that personal relationship with the audience it's really interesting you think about how I mean I'm really lucky in that my stuff travels but it sometimes travels with me you know the stuff that I perform it's sometimes the version that I'm in or the original version that was you know the original version that was made and sometimes it's other people doing it in other places and I think I think that's kind of it's really important to have that flexibility in it whether it's you performing it or someone else who will be making those decisions about how it's performed to allow that latitude to kind of re-craft that relationship with the audience there's always a very clear conceptual relationship with the audience and I don't think that changes for any given piece as it moves around as in there'll be something at the heart of it which is the task of the audience is set to do over and above simply be there the kind of work that you're asking them to do and that won't change it will maybe be seen as more or less useful in different places because people will have different ways of relating to theatre around each other and there'll be different positions for theatre in any particular place in the world in whatever society or culture that particular theatre or performance is but that won't change so for example something like victory condition which I've never been in but which I wrote very clear ask for the audience to watch the action of one play while they're listening to the text of a completely different play you know that that fundamentally is what anyone who watches the production of that will be asked to do but hopefully the latitude is left in it for people to interpret that according to what that personal connection with people might be and how it means and what it means to address people in a room where they are so hopefully that's inbuilt into anything I do that someone else picks up and thinks oh this is useful to me which is just a mind blowing thing that anyone would ever think about or something you do with and then the stuff when I'm actually there I think one of the good things about having that relationship with an audience and about having a relationship with an audience where you are asking them to be present whether you want to look you in the eye maybe you're even asking the new thing means it can kind of you won't be an expert in whatever culture you're performing in in the time that you're there and during the time that you're performing there but it means that at least you're present and you can to the very limited extent it's possible try and take that into account moment by moment and kind of alter the balance of a piece so that it can reach people in terms of like the older generation of the younger generation I don't know I'm not sure I've done that on purpose in anything that I've I've done for you I don't think I think there's maybe an unconscious thing about getting older when I start to think about a version of the world that I'm not in anymore but I also think that one of the big cliches about doing sort of work that's sent us around global kind of power imbalances or crises is like you know what kind of world are we leaving our children you know kind of thing and I'm not interested in consciously addressing that because I think it lets you off the hook for a start it lets me off the hook because you know if I start thinking like that there's a sensation to think well you know I don't have kids fuck them but I mean that's obviously in Jess because I deeply care about all my friends and my relatives children and I do want them to kind of not live in a miserable world but I also think there's a trap door in that thinking so I think it's which allows you to let yourself off the hook so I think it's maybe hopefully accidental it's more useful to think of what you are with a version of yourself in the future through your actions now not in a kind of selfish way but in a kind of that idea of pre-grieving which is really important to certainly the to always maybe the last time which is like being able to conceptualise like a future world that you are still in and where you have done the necessary psychological preparation to be able to cope with the the you know what that world is going to throw at you and crucially to then make yourself useful to the people around you to the greatest extent you possibly can so I suppose it's more about a generational difference between me and future me rather than you know adults and kids not that me and future me are in different generations but you know Rani yeah absolutely I mean for me I it was getting I mean maybe it was just my personal experience but it got me to question like our relationship with one another maybe it's not just between adults and kids but actually it made me think about part of the issue especially within the climate crisis is our relationship with each other and I don't want to use the word respect because it's not about respect but it comes back to this idea of privilege of like whose privilege to to not drown, to not burn to death to not die of starvation, to not die of thirst etc etc or to die in a water wall etc and I don't know the questions are still running around in my head so I want to thank you for getting me to engage with those thoughts because we should never have a moment where we're not thinking about them really if we consider that Tunisia I wanted to ask you whether what your thoughts were on the idea of the relationship between the audience and performance and theatre Yeah I think it's the relationship between the audience and the the art not just in theatre but that is the most important relationship in any sort of art making and I think it is absolutely exactly that thing of what is the work that the audience is doing here and what is the work that the audience is invited to do here and and then and how then does this this space that you're constructing as an artist enable that in the most useful and surprising way for that audience those audience members and that can be about I mean I think for me one of the things that's really exciting about theatre is a possibility there is that you because you're in the same space as the work and you're in the same spaces quite often other people there and that noticing of difference and the idea of well it's not just about what you think but it's also about all these other people that are in the room with you and they're probably quite different from you and actually if you ask all those questions that kind of gets beyond the superficial oh yeah we're here because we're all interested in climate change we know it's a big problem we're here because we want to we do want to do something about it and if the if the piece can just keep kind of taking the layers away until we get to a point where we are doing the work whether it's act kind of like visibly collectively or whether it's internally within the context of this collective thinking about ways through this ways that maybe we haven't thought about as individuals before then I think that can be a really useful thing to take away and that can only happen there with the audience and that can be about and that's where this thing I mean this notion of I was really interested Chris in the first piece that you read the bit about the dream and you ended it talking about like and then the dream ends and it just made me think about so what do we wake up to and it made me think about this idea that actually quite a lot of the time we don't we see the kind of we see the catastrophe but we don't really think about what are we losing or what is the kind of ideal space that we want to keep hold of what is the valuable stuff what are we imagining that we want to kind of protect and steward and hand over here and I wonder whether I feel like that's a really that's not the sort of dream that you can do by yourself that has to kind of happen with other people so in terms of kind of what is the opportunity between the work and the audience it feels like it's that kind of really not necessarily I don't think it's ever the sort of thinking that can become solid in just one event but it's part of that process I think absolutely absolutely Nimisha I was wondering whether you said you had some thoughts earlier on kind of like some thoughts and reflections on how theatre can engage with get people to maybe act directly or anything and from your perspective I'd love to hear that a little bit more and to contextualise something for everybody I'd like to talk about this afterwards but maybe you could start to contextualise your answer Nimisha with this, apparently we've got a lot of comments on social media and sort of talking about like feelings of shame when thinking about climate change, the climate catastrophe and our responsibility, our involvement in it I don't want to overload that on you but maybe if you could maybe contextualise that a little bit Yeah sure I mean I'm not surprised that a lot of those comments come shame guilt and you know they go hand in hand they go hand in hand with anger and despair as well and if I can just maybe I'll pack a little bit about why I think or how I think theatre can be useful I think I think it's about striking a kind of balance which is I know it's a very I don't do it, I don't know how to do it that's your role very skilled at doing it but it's striking that balance between being able to open people sufficiently to be able to touch to move, to prod their privilege to prod that privilege that has helped all of us I guess contribute to the current problems and that when you prod that of course it evokes guilt, it evokes shame it evokes kind of like oh god and it evokes fear, guilt, all of those things but I think the balance is between prodding that and opening that and creating a kind of lasting discomfort not just while you're in the room or the spaceway or absorbed in the theatre but a lasting discomfort and who goes to theatre to feel a lasting discomfort so you've got to strike that balance between creating a lasting discomfort where the feelings don't become so overwhelming that our defences kick in and we smooth over them and we kind of walk out and go okay where are we going for a meal or where are we going out now or what are we going to do now wanting people to somehow sit with it, I'm one of these people who never talks after theatre I can't, I'm not interested in dissecting what I've heard or felt I just need to stay with it and absorb it and just my own kind of private thoughts and feelings over days, weeks to absorb it and I know that everyone deals with it differently but I think it's about kind of enabling people to stay with that discomfort not shut the doors but and I think this is where the kind of potential for theatre to foster resistance comes is if people can stay connected to that discomfort and not react to their own sense of shame or guilt or feeling overwhelmed by just kind of shutting down, if we can do that we may just begin to be in touch with our sort of creative imagination, you know and this is what theatre can do I want to feel that there is a seed that's planted in me that sort of somehow awakens that kind of creative imagination of new possibilities what could it look like what could life look like what could I do differently how could it be better and I think that kind of process of both making people feel uncomfortable but also giving kind of an opportunity to foster hope or foster our imagination is what really fuels collective hope and I think that is the seeds of resistance, I don't think you go out from theatre thinking let's go to the streets I think this is a really a slow transformative process that we have to allow ourselves to dip into and out you know I go to theatre I come out I read something I come out but you have to want to stay with that discomfort and tolerate that discomfort if you can just see a glimpse of a new possibility a different way to be T'n usual Chris would you like to add anything to that? That's absolutely true I think I think the key to the the planting of that seed that could potentially flower into having a different way of doing things moment by moment keeping that I was thinking of it is keeping that door open between the theatre and the real world so you're hopefully giving people that they can carry through that door rather than they just walk through that door and it shuts and they go well that was a nice high and a half the trick to keeping that door open in terms of particularly in terms of when you're making work about things that we're currently failing to do or things that we think about in a way that isn't useful is never never point at the audience never try and solve for the audience a problem that you have identified in your claiming to have solved for yourself never point at anyone unless you've pointed at yourself first and actually use yourself as the example for I think about this in other shows where I talk more specifically about ideas of privilege and things like that something that I've tried to do and I'm not saying that I've in any way in any way it's an ongoing you use your own failures as something to put down that other people can pick up and look at themselves in the light of rather than using the process of making a show to put yourself in a position where you arrive on the stage and you're just simply telling them how you solve their problem you know so that's the to me that's the key process to be able to effectively plant that seed that you talked about so beautifully in the Misha Yeah, no, I totally agree and yeah, I think I'd just pick up again on what you were saying to Misha about discomfort and sitting with discomfort I think that's absolutely one of the most one of the most valuable things that theatre can do and I think again that a lot of art can do but because theatre often happens it is a public space so much and to be able to do that in public to do that without shame for that to be allowed and for us to practice that is such a valuable thing because we're like so increasingly atomised to hold those things individually those things are seen as weakness and there is uncomfortability everywhere we're always in states of that and this is not something to hide away from it's not something to do in private until you've solved it somehow is it? so to actually be upfront about that is essential and I suppose the only thing I'll add to what you were saying Chris is that notion of the door onto the real world is so important and that maybe it's also about making sure that that door is not necessarily the same door that you came in through as it were that there's a little bit there's a little bit more or a different perspective on the world to kind of take out with you as well so it's really about that kind of transformatory thing thank you so much I've got one last question we are very close to time but I've been giving permission just to squeeze in one last question so a conversation that we're also trying to have across GLOD 1 and we're continuing GLOD 2 we spoke to the Freedom Theatre from Palestine the last event two weeks ago about this as well and about how like with political theatre or theatre that wants to engage the audience in political thought to put it like that we also argue that it's not just about the content or you know as the water in the bucket but also like how as Chris to use Chris's beautiful image about how the bucket is made like how the the actual political theatre is made because if you know that the idea of theatre how we make theatre the process of making theatre during rehearsals during the field where the research before rehearsals etc really really matters whether you have some thoughts on that and Chris and then Alicia find me it's so important and I think there can be no one way to do it that is where as an artist your purpose, your values, your ethics come into and I think there is again I actually think that's something that in this country we don't as theatre makers in this country we don't talk enough about how those processes reflect our ethics and our values because I think we're often kind of told these things are often couched as if there are good ways to do things and bad ways to do things but actually it's about our own choices and responsibilities and so maybe maybe we'd feel like there was more political theatre more politically charged theatre as well if we were better at being more public and more accountable to our own kind of ethics Chris have you got anything you'd like to add to that? I think that's I'd say that it's quite often and I'm aware that I'm speaking with the privilege of someone who's been doing this for like 20 odd years now so I've obviously kind of I've built up a certain immunity to you know difficult conversations I suppose but it's like and a certain protection from them as well which is you have to acknowledge both because of what I am and because of you know how long I've been doing what I do but I think there's a real thing in what Tynu just saying about it being a constantly evolving process of being honest with yourself and taking on the input of other people about what the useful values to hold are and taking responsibility for working with organisations that share those as much as possible and not working with people you don't I couldn't agree more and thank you for that Namisha have you got anything that you'd like to add to that maybe there's actually I think there are some parallels with also maybe your field of work as well in terms of the process not just the end product Yeah absolutely I mean I think you know I completely want to emphasise the point about sort of connecting with our own values and being really honest about the privilege that we have in it being able to shape those stories and methods and decide which of the issues that we shine a light on and I think the how is so important because if we're really going to live our values then I think you have to privilege the experiences and the voices of people who have lived experience of the issues that you're trying to raise awareness about you know otherwise we're just reproducing privilege right we're just talking to each other telling each other you know how thoughtful and clever and you know interesting these ideas are but actually we're not the people often that have lived experience of the issues that we're really trying to shine a light on so I think it has to start with a really participatory process right from the word go who are we talking for who are we trying to you know talk about and who for we're not just talking into each other absolutely thank you so much unfortunately that is all we've got time for tonight but I want to thank you to Nugia, Nimisha and Chris for joining me and for such an inspiring conversation I really wish you could go on longer thank you Chris once again for the fantastic reading it was really amazing thank you and thanks to our partners Howround for hosting GLOD and to our other partners F-side Sydney Club, Romania's first feminist Sydney Club devoted to promoting films made by women I'd also like to thank the Royal Court Theatre in London as this most stories and performances in the Netherlands for supporting tonight's event and thank you to everyone who joined us in Solidarity tonight and I'd like to remind you that if you are able to make a donation to the charities Chris mentioned before the break you will be able to find the links in the Howround streaming and in social media and basically the next event is on Monday the 22nd of Feb and we will be joined by Afghan writer, director and performer Manira Hashemi be sharing with us a montage of extracts from a series of her plays that she's done throughout her career exploring gender and political violence in Afghanistan including a play that she directed that was the first production ever in Afghanistan to be produced solely by women and everyone you can sign up to our future events on our website so thank you again and see you next time