 Can I have in three, two, one, and you're live. Welcome everybody to week four of the Segal talks here from New York City at the Graduate Center CUNY at the City University of New York. It's a little bit colder day and we are in the four weeks of the programming actually I think we are the only institution in New York City perhaps in the US, creating daily new programs and not showing what is already out there. And we always felt it is important to listen to artists, to theater artists to hear their voices and to actually also listen carefully. And we had right now participants from Egypt, Lebanon, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belgium, Italy, and so many, many countries. And this Monday we have a truly a special guest without it's the great Milo Rao from Switzerland who is based in Belgium at Ghent and at the moment for many people. He represents the very best, the very innovative, the most thought provoking approach to a contemporary new theater of like what we have in our little press release we write new forms are needed for the new times we live in. That's what Brecht said and Milo already had done that he has been a frequent guest at the Segal Center film festivals. We tried once or twice to get him over here. And they didn't work out because he's a really hard, hard worker. He's really dedicated his work and life to it. He has done great shows like the Zurich Trikes, the Congo Tribunal, the Moscow Trials. He has done a play about George Chesko five easy pieces. And they all create a new work where the documentary theater, a classic theater, theater that in a Brecht's sense, provokes thinking ultimately to take action. He takes hold and he really is a brilliant young director. He just also did in Mosul in Iraq. He did Orestaya, the wonderful actress, as Susu Abdul-Majid who I also know worked with him. She was the Cassandra and she told me a lot about the work he did there and I know it's in the film now. He is cutting at the film about the life of Jesus and so many, many other things. These times which we have now here, Milo, most of all welcome is to make meaning out about it and to think. We are bombarded with voices from politicians, virologists, economic advisors, but we really need to hear also from the artists. Artists traditionally have been on the right side of history, on the right side of social progress, on the right side of what is the truth. And we would love to know and hear from you. You are sitting, I assume in Ghent, are you in Germany or Switzerland? When are you at the moment? I'm in Cologne in Germany. It's not far from Ghent, two hours from, it's in the very west from Germany at the border to Belgium. Thank you. I'm leaving there. What time is it now in the Cologne? It's six, six, five. Six hours later, yeah. So you live with your family? So my girlfriend, she's also the graphic designer of all my projects and then I have two daughters. So the four of us are now in this apartment here and since three weeks. How long is the quarantine now in the confinement in New York? How long are you at home now? Yeah, I think it's like over four or five weeks now and it was very loose. As you know, Trump says, you know, he's not wearing a mask, but people should wear a mask. So but it's a very serious situation in New York and the state of New York has more dead. And then most states or any state in the world. True. And so we are, we are really stunned by all of it. And of course, if you look at the numbers and we talked about it earlier, we had arrested Tarnara from Vokina Faso on the program. He said 400,000 people die of malaria every year in Africa. The world doesn't stop that we don't even have money to have these measles of vaccinations in India and Rupa Roy. This told us about it. 500,000 people are trying to leave New Delhi on foot because all the service people that disenfranchise no longer allowed in the homes of the people they served or facefully. And they were trying to walk home. Some of them up to 1000 kilometers. It was a biblical things are happening. So it puts us also in perspective. We don't hear these stories. Also not in the New York Times as much, especially not from India. And so how is it in in in again in Belgium? Are you connected to the theater scene there? Do you what do you hear from Belgium? Yeah, I think it's more or less the same like like in Germany. I mean, here it's a bit, let's say, a little bit better organized, a little less aggressive than in Belgium because the Belgium state is, as you know, a bit dysfunctional. I have to confess. And in a good and in a bad way sometimes. But of course, they are very disciplined too. So now it's it's we are over the peak, I guess, so it's slowly going down again. And the discussion is open now to weaken the confinement to, for example, in one week, my younger daughter, we go to school again. I don't know how it is in the in the in New York in the U.S. Unthinkable at the moment. Unthinkable. Unthinkable. So here slowly it's taking back. Of course, you have like kind of experts from both sides saying when we go back now like on 1919 with the Spanish flu, it will come back then even stronger. So you don't know. And yeah, I think you mentioned the malaria case. And often in, for example, in Africa where you have dying people, thousands and thousands all the time without any measures without any media coverage. And of course, in Corona, one positive thing you could say that it started in the in the rich centers of the globalized world. So, immediately, there, there was an answer, of course, to it. So it's, it's, that's, that's on the one hand, a good thing. On the other hand, of course, now it's also spreading to the whole rest of the world. You mentioned India, where it stopped a bit later. I was just like three weeks ago, three and a half weeks ago, I was still in the, in the north of Brazil to stage the, the Antigone. And they are also a bit, I think, comparable to, to, to the US. There is not a real clear strategy from the, from the government of, of trial person are so he's also more or less blocking his institutions, giving very chaotic advice to, to the media and to the to the officials. He just dismissed his health minister three, three days ago, four days ago. So it's, I mean, in every country you feel it depends strongly from the reaction of the government. On the other hand, from how is the civil society organized? How do they, how do they take it? Your rehearsals were interrupted in Brazil. You couldn't, you couldn't finish your project, right? The Antigone project was interrupted. It was at one moment we decided, I mean, it was a bit strange. It was quite interesting to see because when I arrived in Brazil, it was one week to the lockdown in Europe. And when they locked down, so they closed my theater when it was absent in Brazil and I had to take all these decisions from very far. But I didn't take, it was quite strange. I didn't take it personally. So it was kind of, okay, this is happening in Europe, but in north of Brazil, nothing arrives, although not Corona at all. And it was also a bit, I am working together with the landless movement there, and they are activists. And of course you have a big, big optimism of the will in a, in a social movement and you think if you go on, it will not happen. So you have these on the bed and then after some days we decided that it was too dangerous because activists from all the country prepared themselves to come up to the north to participate in the project and then we stopped it. Then we postponed it to November and I went in quarantine to the south, to Sao Paulo, waited there from for some time until I got, we got a flight and then we went back to Amsterdam, so to Europe. Milo, you created a Gantt manifesto when you took over the theater in Gantt and I think if, if I'm right paragraph number one is it's no longer about portraying the world. It's about changing it. How does Corona, is it come in for you that is, is that also changing your thought about or is it confirming what you already thought? Yeah, both things. I'm, I'm, I can, I can feel it myself and I can of course see it in Europe. You have, it's a very mixed situation. The one side, the globalization is stopped because you, for example, you have in Europe, even the European Union is kind of postponed for later. The national states are going back. The borders are closed and you can see in the outside borders of Europe, you can feel how even almost a bit fascist is this new state of emergency is that they blocked the refugee camps. People are locked in, in Greece, in South Italy, they can't go out anymore. Everything is blocked and every nation, if you want, they are taking care of themselves. So kind of you could say that the global solidarity is stopped for some time. On the other hand, you have, and this is a kind of a very, you could say anarchistic joy or even feel a bit that the whole big mega machine, the capitalistic mega machine is stopped from one moment to the other. That big industries, for example, Mercedes, Adidas, etc., are kind of half nationalized Volkswagen, even so they got a lot of financial support. And now for me, the big question is what, what is the next step? How do we democratize? How do we actually politicize this situation? What is the things we are asking to these big industries? What is Volkswagen producing after Corona? How, how are we going on with this experience we have now? Because for me it's kind of, you could say a general rehearsal to the climate crisis. So how can we stop the machine? How can we act together? So we can learn, I think, a lot out of this, but we can also, and I feel it even in my own theater, I feel it in the whole artistic field, that everybody is planning kind of from the moment on when we will take again from September, October, November or December or even January, but just to restart with what we did before. And I think now we should really take a time, take this gap to think, how can we make differently theater? For example, you were talking about the form of doing theater. So I have the biggest house we have again, it's a 19th century hall, 700 people in it, and this will only open in perhaps January, that you can play there again. So we are waiting, thinking into the architecture of the 19th century, you know, and perhaps we should go to other places, we should go to the virtual space or to just outside in the street or smaller spaces, we should have another way of thinking theater after this crisis. And then there's a lot of new forms being developed at that very moment. As I said, for example, people is restarting doing theater in small spaces in Europe. There is of course all the tryouts in the virtual space, which are starting to connect, there are rehearsals online. You have a lot of, and I think for me it's one of the most positive effects that we found out how many discussions we can have without taking a flight, for example. So we can discuss, we never discussed before, because we said, okay, if we don't have the opportunity that I fly to New York or you fly here, we will not do it. And now we do it because we have to do it, and we get used to it. So it's, for me, we take quite fast, many big steps. On the other hand, making theater, so I'm working mostly on my films in that moment in the last three weeks, making theater that's a genre medium of presence. And I learned how true this is. When I want to do an Antigone with the landless movement with indigenous people in Brazil, I have to be there with these people. Of course I'm exchanging with Kaisara, my Antigone in the play, the indigenous activist who plays Antigone. I'm exchanging by Skype and Zoom and we are writing a speech together, or the play, but it's not that we can really rehearse because it's very, it's not working dialectically. It's really like, I don't really like it, but at the same time, a lot of decisions we have to take in Antigone, for example, we can take it now, what took like four hours before we can do in 15 minutes in a video call. So we are kind of smoother than before. So this is on the positive side. Just when we are talking about the functioning of the institution. But I really, really think that we should now take this gap, this stop to rethink what we do on stage, on which stage, with whom and in what time frames. What do you think, in general, should change in theater? Not just in you all because you already do so different, but what do you feel, what hasn't been working in general, or maybe just share your thoughts, why it should be different? Yeah, I think that, you know, I was reading a lot in the last week, so I was preparing the Antigone and I was writing a text about Oedipus, King Oedipus. So I was like, like diving into the tragic mind and I was asking myself why do we still play this place today. There are only 32 tragedies that came from Greek times to us. So why are we continuing to play this? And I think because these are really tragic play that show an antagonism that we can't solve. That there is a problem that is not just dramatic, but somehow insolvable. There is a tragic problem. And I think we are at that very moment confronted with a situation that is tragic. That we have to rethink the system we are living in. It's not just that we can make it a bit smoother and we can put a bit of green energy or whatever and it will go on. No, we have to stop that machine once forever or we will be fucked and we deserve it. And I think this to understand, really understand this and to make, to give a sensitivity to it, to give stories to it, to give forms to it, that we start to live in this kind of tragic moment as a culture, as a civilization, like the Greeks did in the 5th century before Christ when they decided to develop this art form we still use because they had, they were confronted to huge changes in their civilization. So a really a time change. And I think we should come back to this and we should find forms to translate what the experts and what the scientists tell us since 50, 60, 100 years. We know what will happen in 10 or 15 or 20 years. We know everything about the climate collapse. We know what happens to India, to Europe, to US, to Africa, etc. In not a lot of time during our generation, but we can't feel it because we can't tell it and we don't have any way of, let's say, knowledge to connect what we know and what we can do as a society. So we have to reconnect on it and I think theatre plays a role in giving a symbolic space to this learning action and trying out possible actions. You introduced me with mentioning the trials, for example. I did the Congo Tribunal. This is a tribunal we did because we saw we have a transnational economy. We have a globalized economy, but we have not a globalized economic law. So if you are pushed out of your land, let's say as a Congolese citizen from a Canadian or US or Swiss enterprise, there's no tribunal you can appeal to. So we created it. We created the theatre tribunal, but the real one, with real advocates, with real witnesses, with real cases, and it somehow became real. And I think, you quoted in the beginning Bertolt Recht, who said, theatre is a stage where you learn to act politically. You represent, of course, you have to represent, you have to let know, perhaps you have to declare stuff sometimes. I mean, I like theatre as an emotional machine and much more Stanislavski than Bercht ever was. I mean, to be true, Bercht used the techniques of Stanislavski too. He just didn't label them. But on the other hand, of course, I think that theatre is a new topic tool, much more, for example, than movies can be because movies you have always disconnected. You have never a public connected to a very life moment where you have to decide, for example, on the one or the other side, or you have really a presence of somebody, etc., etc. And you also see that at that very moment of disconnection, it's theatre that is disconnected the most. So we are losing. I think a theatre makes us much more. What I'm doing now, I'm writing, I'm editing films, I'm talking through the camera. So I can continue with almost everything, but not the social life. I can't go demonstrating, I can't go making theatre. So actually the political sphere is blocked. And that means that theatre as a political tool is blocked too. You said it's about stopping the machine. Yeah, I mean, it's, we somehow didn't stop the, you couldn't say we didn't stop the machine ourselves as a civic society because we are just following the measures of our governments and we are very disciplined in doing it. Before this happened, there was, of course, the idea of having a kind of a green dictatorship and you would have like rules that you have to follow. So you can't use your car on Wednesdays and on Saturdays or I don't know. And I think what we have to do now is, of course, to translate because that's how we are functioning. I think we should we should now stop with the neoliberal idea that everything should be free to do or not to do. And that we are only individuals and we can't act together. We learned now that we can act together, but it has to be somehow there have to be kind of rules that we now decide all together. I think now it's really the moment of take the next step. And like as I said, politizing or democratizing this state of emergency we are living in. We have to decide now, okay, we learned this, this, this. What are we doing now? How is, for example, the parliament controlling the economy, which is doing now 100%. How are we doing it in the future? How we are organizing all this stuff in the future and then we can decide on this. And I think here I'm extremely positive after this experience of Corona that even a state like Brazil where just the solidarity of the civil society saves the country. You have strong institutions, and they save the people so you have a, you see, we are really prepared, not only in the West, also in, I mean, also in the, in the whole rest of the world, we are quite well prepared to take these steps to avoid the climate collapse. So I think this is a very good, as I said, a very good general rehearsal to show that we can go down with the machine. But now, when we start again, we should do it following the things we learned, or we have to learn. And we should continue, continue on the, on the, on the, on the, how to call it on this kind of halfly nationalized way of feeling, for example, with the economy. That is incredible. So, using this theater as a symbolic space is that as a model for something they say they're Brazilian. The work of the Antigone you show a possible world, and if it's possible on stage it might be possible in life people were thinking that's why some governments don't like theater the Tia Varsova, who is creating new political works as you know this is why what we like to do, this is why we do theater and we had also Abhishek who said, you know, they asked him how is your theater effective in India, he said, I don't know, ask the government they're forbidding it. It means it's something is going to is happening their films 20 million people see or more, or one TV series, you know, and, but my my small plays get forbidden yours also have been in a hard time in some places they were censored. Do you feel your theater is is a very open political activist theater. I'm, I'm doing place or actions that are extremely directly political like this this tribunals or trials or for example we were talking shortly about the Jesus film in preparation of this. This talk, the new gospel, a film I made in South Italy in Matera where Pasolini Pierpaolo Pasolini director I like a lot did Jesus film in the 60s and then may Gibson did a quite trashy version of the last part of the Passion of the Christ called Passion of the Christ in the, I think 2004. And I brought the actors from Pasolini and the Mel Gibson together in last autumn to make a new Jesus film but when I came there. I saw it just would have been an aesthetic action to do it because Matera the capital of culture in Europe in 2019 is surrounded by refugee camps, illegalized people 500,000 people. And the whole Italian agriculture is working because these people is is cheap are cheap workers and they are under the control of mafia they are doing the whole tomato and the orange etc etc work so without these 500 people without the illegalized people there it wouldn't work. And then I said okay what would Jesus do who would Jesus be today, and I found a Cameroon activist. Even Sunny who was working on the plantation 10 years ago doing the first strike against the mafia, and I asked him if he wants to play my Jesus. And then asked him, but how did you do your strike. How was it possible because of course, there's the strategy of dividing people by by identity politics so a Cameroon people as somebody from Cameroon wouldn't work with somebody from Congo wouldn't work with somebody from from Romania and of course the mafia is dealing with this And he told me, I made it like this, I had 12 sub leaders from the 12 different countries people were coming from and I said, oh wow 12 sub leaders. And he remembers really Jesus so search your 12 sub leaders, and you're 12 apostles and we found 12 activists from 12 different societies living there in the refugees camps or outside sex workers etc. And then we made together with the actors from Mel Gibson and the actors still alive from Pasolini for example his Jesus became our John the Baptist. We made this film again and there's one part so we will edit it now we are more or less more or less finished and we will finish in the film the next weeks. But at the same time we founded what we call the houses of dignity. So we occupied houses, because you have this this absurd contradiction in the in the in the refugee law in Europe that if you don't have a place where you live. You don't have the possibility to work and to get papers and if you don't have get papers, you can't have a house, you know, so you are in between all the time so we occupied. And we pushed the state and the Catholic Church to accept these houses. And that's how these people became legal. And that was one outcome or is still one outcome of this this this project we did. So there was a film, a Jesus film at the same hand the same at the same time a political action. And I would say it's very difficult to say what is it now. Because when you watch the film you would see parts of the reward parts of this this political action but you would also see a Jesus film. So I think as an artist you are always at with one foot in an aesthetical world in a in a we call it symbolical world metaphorical world that you do as if. And on the other hand what you do as if as an impact in the real world that becomes real. Of course you have to push it. But when the first parliament was was was was created in Europe in France in the in the 18th to the end of the 18th century. The king was saying but guys, you just invented that you are the parliament you are not you are just people from the provinces. And they said no we are the parliament we are the nation nation now we are now the legal power and he had just to accept it and in the end he even lost his head so this is another story. But every time when humans are working and I studied that sociology at would you every social action is a is in the beginning a theatrical action of course. So there is what seems to us just the reality the social reality is the normalization of acts of creation that other generations or perhaps even ourselves did at the moment so art becomes quite simply real for me it was like every time I do projects or at least look to other projects to books to films it's not only theater of course I'm impressed how small the step is from from what you could call a creation an invention to something that seems real to everybody. I remember even in the soft power side in the politics of images when we did the Jesus film and we had this black Jesus. At one moment we had a discussion in one in one village we had a lot of discussion with the public etc. And an activist was asked by the public but what is the outcome of this because it's just the film it's it's and he said you know that's the first black Jesus we have in Europe in the film history. And when the next comes it will just be normal that there is like like a black president it will be the next one and then some days later I had a discussion with my with my children because we have the first female counselor Angela Merkel in Germany and I was telling them listen they did vote for a new counselor in a year and perhaps it's it's this guy and it was a male and my daughter said I didn't know that the man can also become cancer I thought only women can become cancer because Angela Merkel is the only one she knows you know and there you can see how I don't know how simple you can like kind of create kind of a normality of whatever in the good and in the bad sense you know so in the bad sense of course we have a lot of examples here in in Europe and all over the world what you say what is normal and what isn't you know. So I think broaden this idea of normality, which is quite simple actually in the arts is one of the main project so it's a and then of course the question is when you start to it's an act to do it but when you start to make an institution out of it of a parliament for example, then the question is, but who can be in the parliament who invented the parliament and of course France the parliament in France stayed for a very long time at the parliament of rich white men. So I think you know, so you have to think as a permanent revolution you have to reinstall reinstalling went all the time. What you did because the biggest revolutionaries of course the day after revolution, they became the most conservatory people in the world. This is the problem we are in, although when you create new forms of theater. So when for example we tried to create new forms or 10 years ago, somebody you should invite is the group really put the call from Europe. Yeah, next week they are. So for me, this is a very good example, because they are like kind of 10 years older than I am. They created in Europe. It was not new but they really somehow installed it as a form that not actors on stage but people like you and me telling called experts, telling about our daily life experience so when they would make a play about Marx, so they would perhaps invite somebody who was leftist at a certain time or so etc. You know, or when they talk about death they would invite somebody who is close to dying etc. So this was at that moment it was new because it was very metaphysical. They didn't invite children because they are very authentic because they wanted to know what children know. So this very sociological approach to make theater was around 2000, very new in Europe and then you could wait like three or four years and it became in the big city theaters like the way to do it. So in every shitty Shakespeare mise en scene, you would have like two or three real people making it authentic and telling about whatever they lived in their lives, you know. So it became very fast, how to say, a classical tool of bourgeois theater. So it goes very fast so you have to stay smooth and also accept that you have to leave behind stuff. You have to rethink your forms you are using. I'm, for example, I'm a lot of times criticized by what we are doing because it's megalomaniac because it's kind of neocolonialistic because it's etc etc. Because international solidarity when you go to the Amazon, and you work there and doing an Antigone of course you can ask but why Antigone. Why bring a European play from 2000 years ago written by a white man like Sophocles why bring it to the Amazon isn't this kind of neocolonialism. And then you have to think it and you have to discuss it and you have to develop it with the people you are working there. We were chanceful because they said we had to kind of explain the Antigone for five minutes and they said of course we understand Bolsonaro that's crayon Antigone. That's a traditional society that is being erased by by the by the agro business etc. So they understood immediately what it is about. But then they just started immediately also to rewrite the texts, for example in the Greek tragedy everybody suicides in the end, and they said, sorry, but in a social movement like the landless movement, you would never suicide so we don't accept to suicide in the end. And then you have to think, okay, okay, and then it really becomes an Antigone. So how you dive in, how you can adapt and how can you, yeah, how can you really take the context as I mean that you quoted the first point of the game manifesto saying that realism doesn't mean that you depict something real but that the depicted or the act of depiction creates new reality. And of course the best is if it's in political change, if you can kind of engage in a situation that is unjust and it changed through the process of creating a plane. So this is of course, it's very beautiful. You know, this is incredible. You know, see there's the space of the real the imagine the symbolic and also of representation and that actually it is powerful and important is make me think of that famous sentence of what you said of the revolution will be televised in a way you say now the revolution will be performed, you know, people will perform acts of revolution, whether it's in theater or outside and activism that the lines and blur on that symbolic meaning that the remedy brought the everyday people in into the theater, you know that perhaps I mean this means everyday people are part of politics, you know, everyday people are part of the machine all the sense that means it's a changing that you keep it in mind like you said you know, we think, I couldn't just do it because you know, people have, I have studied sociology and we have to think and adapt and I know you often have like only 20% of the classic text left and you rework it. Interesting. Anu Rupa Roy from India on the call said, you know, she's thinking about we doing the Mahabharata, which is not used by state television. It's almost, you know, a right wing tool. We reform it, we change things until this other ways of looking at it and people are stunned. They can't imagine she said they performed in front of 400 white wing military people. And then their car was blocked when they got out and they were afraid of their lives almost and they said, now, can you come out and tell is that really true? What you told us, you know, she said, so he said, I'm going to do that place about uncertainty where it's not clear how it comes out. And that so that is that is interesting. Is anything changing? I mean, you are three weeks in at your home. Is something do you feel something inside you is changing or you're in contact with something that you normally are not or is it good or bad? But is something do you feel this is changing you? Yeah, I mean, what is changing in me, you know, I'm not a really a claustrophobic guy. I always liked sitting at home and writing, but I couldn't do it because I had to to make theater. So now I can't and I feel like falling back in my students' times when I was 20, 21, making project, not knowing if they will happen, making project ABCD, discussing with people by phone and then planning and have plans, etc. And I like this open space, I have to say where I'm not kind of very pragmatically involved all the time. So I don't feel a, I don't feel a hurrah wacky, I have to say I'm very happy to, for example, read the tragedies again read the book about Simon Grishley, the tragedy Greeks and us a very beautiful book. And I read in the last days I read some writings from Marx, even again, I didn't read since 25 years. And I have a lot of discussions with almost everybody we are working on a book now called why theater, and we are asking 100 people all over the world to contribute to this book to ask ourselves but what will happen. What will happen to the future activists like people that makes very classical theater like Peter Brug, you know, like very, very classical but people you wouldn't like kind of expect in a book with this title. So we're really asking ourselves how can we renew the tradition of theater after Corona somehow how can there be a theater that announces the post capitalist times and not in a in a in a broad leftist the way of thinking that people back on a lot of levels. And that's why we are asking, as you do in your discussions, people from the Amazonia people from India, a lot of people from from Africa because there's so many knowledge, especially for theater for me. That is not coming from Europe or from the tradition from your especially not from the very moment of now, for example, I'm very happy that the international system of exchanging the same 10 names is now for a moment stopped. That you don't have these international festivals I like them a lot, but where is invited just the same people and now, when it stopped you're kind of waking up out of a dream and asking yourself. But why didn't we consider to really think on what we do next season or in the next edition of our festival. Why did we only try to invite the 10 big names and then the 10 local big names and then why didn't we really think what can we change by doing festival by doing a season. We're talking about this why see at the book or about of course the next season and in my theater and and again, and in my company the IPM. What are we doing next we feel a need to do something because we go through all these possible plans to make the choice of a plan that really is worth executing it, perhaps you can only execute one plan next season, so we should take a plan that is, is a good plan. Or for example, when we do Antigone, I want to do it in the good way in Amazonia and I want to I want it's this is this is for me. A very, very beautiful moment because I was kind of like I think everybody, you know in the capitalism you can you have no work or you have too much, but I think in between is not in neoliberal times that you are completely useless. Or you have to work like crazy. And I felt a bit back now in the kind of offer of a healthy middle line where I'm, we have for example a lot of talks people is asking to do a talk live stream here live stream there. And I'm, I'm not kind of meeting the people again that I met anyway, like four weeks again and then doing a live stream but I tried to meet the people I wouldn't meet like we really tried several times. But we never did it. So now we have a chance and this is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how does your day look like any walker through like if you are what do you get what do you do how do you structure your day in Cologne how do we measure that. So I'm, I'm, I like to wake up quite, quite early. So, and I'm writing in the very morning. So until from seven, seven, 30 until noon. And in the afternoon I'm hanging around with my, with my, with my daughters. We do a bit of schoolwork, but not, not too much. The phone calls I read. We go for walking it's it's it's very possible here so you can go in the park for example if you have some, some distance. And of course I'm trying to organize also a bit in the afternoon but I always did it like this that the mornings are always used for writing or rehearsing and the afternoons are used for the real life and the organization of the real life. When you wake up you are very fresh. I, yeah, I have to say I for me to switch from from traveling a lot producing a lot to sitting at home. It was extremely natural. I, of course, sometimes it's a bit claustrophobic, then I go out or whatever but it's. It's impossible. I just the only thing you know we have big big crisis at the moment. And I'm doing a lot in petition and political work at the European borders because we have all this, I guess, perhaps the same in the south border of the States. We have a lot of people blocked there. A lot of young people, children even. And this is a big big crisis and it's completely impossible to send somebody there or to go there you can't go. It's, it's not possible at the moment. So you are really a bit kind of limited to a very to write texts to make calls to make petitions but you can't really political work is is very blocked and on a that's that's higher institutional level of course this is the big problem. Because we have a lot of things that in Europe change at the very moment like in every crisis that you have the kind of political parties and the governments like pushing a lot of economic stuff in a bad way like fast through when nobody can can kind of react because of emergency so this is this is problematic and then I'm sitting at home and reading a book about the Greeks and the tragedy and of course I I know that this is not not really helpful in the situation to do this all the reading stuff so it's. Yeah, so that's, yeah, I think this time is now coming to an end. This time of waiting at home, it has to end. It was for some time it was healthy, but now we have to to take the decisions out of it we have to act again. Good and to act means you try to make calls your right letter is from home or you mean you look forward, most probably will open soon in a couple of weeks I mean in Germany is different. They are plans to open schools go out. So are you planning to go back to again do you think there will be social distancing in theater like every five seats is one person one row empty or what what are you what are the plans and again for your theater. I mean we are officially announced next season in end of May. And then we are, we have a plan to go with small units but this is really in planning to the city and playing outside the theater I think the theater can now it's officially close like street theater you're going to go to locations outside in the city of Ghent. Starting starting from August on. Yeah, we go we have a lot of project next season is called against integration. So we are really like, we have a whole season that is kind of exploring the possibilities to do theater outside the institution and outside kind of classical acting. So we have one project is called dissident where we where we want to work with schools, and then we have another project in Amazonia and etc etc so everything is happening, not in the building, which will be until September anyway by law now. It's impossible in September we will as you say start with some, not 600 people but perhaps 200 and 100 and and I just like some days ago when we were talking about how we do the plan when do we play the next time I don't know our big place. I was just deciding let's not wait for it let's plan a season that is as if you couldn't open. Okay, you have really to do another theater let's let's start think about this. And I think this is what you have to do because as I said the very strange thing is that we are adapting to an architecture that was made in the 19th century. We are adapting to halls that were made and constructed a long time ago or in the 80s or in the 90s during neoliberal times but this is an architecture that perhaps is not is not working anymore or working in a different way. So why take it just as an disadvantaged and we have to wait until we can do it in the proper way, then let's do it in another way. That's that's a fantastic idea and I think there's a have I heard that approach I think that makes a lot of sense any be person the choreographer in New York said she was interested in the kind of six foot distance as a choreographer you know she says actually more or less it's a distance I often tell my dancers you know they come together but if they stay close enough and so how does it work on the street they will now see each other move through it. So I would love to hear if you say you do it outside let's say on a on a on the square in again will there be a monologue or people in a costume or people with a microphone like a guitar player on the street. What are the what will the project look like are you thinking of a specific scenes to play or is that still open. The important thing is perhaps more basic than this because you can do a very bourgeois theater outside the theater space of the 19th century as you said I could just to ask an actor to make a monologue and then he makes the monologue inside or outside. I think this is only very stupid people will think that this is then very revolutionary theater if you do this. Because it's just a trick and I think we should kind of step out of the tricks because we had these kind of tricks going in the streets that started I don't know in the 20s and then in the 60s and then again and again but what are we doing outside are we occupying what is the action we are doing with whom are we working who is holding this monologue this is for example school boys and school. How are we developing with it and university for what you know is it an university of resistance is in the university to create new ways of writing theater of playing theater of creating the institution of theater that you really can take this moment to transform it because we just now send out our specialists of doing theater in a square and then the light guy makes the beautiful light and myself I would direct a bit and then somebody by memory will tell a monologue of Shakespeare I don't see any use in doing this I like it I always as a child I liked sitting outside and watching it as you said this distance and being kind of surrounded not by walls but by. It's beautiful we should do it but we should really also like we think what is the act of doing theater because when the Greeks did theater. It was kind of directly linked to their political scene at all you know it was kind of really. I think you have Mr Schechner tomorrow. Yes. And he can I can tell you a lot about the ritual of doing theater when the young man came back came back from the wall and then the big Dionysian festival was happening and they were dramatically talking about what happened. If we can reopen the space of where the traumas of society and there are a lot after this month that we are now at home dying or not dying or whatever comes out and we have a festival like this and we have a meeting and we use theater again as a real meeting not just taking a ticket with a beautiful dress sitting down in the hall and watching from the black into the into the into the light etc etc but we we went this meeting space a theater, especially after a time when meeting was impossible. I am I'm very happy but I'm extremely afraid that the aestheticization I don't know if the aestheticization of like for example, the movements you do in the street when you don't want to to meet and that we. You know, or the this this is a mask in Mozart operas, we will see all this on stage, of course, we will have the aestheticization of everything. And if this happens that we just introduce all this new knowledge in the old way of making we do the same karaoke of the old Canon we did before, but just with some new gadgets. And people make money off it or want to advance their careers. I mean the quick theater of course also the beauty was you would see the city of essence in the back, you know from the city was really the backdrop. Gods were in the temples people believe they were you know in there watching you spoke to them actually not so much often to the audiences. So, so you would say on a square and again, you create a school of people. So like you said, they're like writing a play with the people in the city, but what I don't know if you could share some of the idea I would be interested. What, what are you planning to do on those squares and get, you know, by a bit by accident we anyway made a decision even before this corona crisis happened to have a season that is not a season like the last one because the first season. It's my first season as an artistic director and the first season was a kind of revolutionary one. So we created what you called global or saw with a lot of people non actors, actors, dancers, just people, even animals. So we really opened the idea of doing theater to all living somehow. The second season was kind of we are we were like using the the manifesto the rules, the ensemble and you made them very successful theater like new classics as we call the altarpiece. The altarpiece, for example. And in the first season we decided to go not only on the streets in Ghent because Ghent is just an example it's just a city Ghent is everywhere and everything is into Ghent you would find a lot of Americans a lot of people even from the city like in every city. So going outside for example as I said going to schools for example going to neighborhoods going to Amazonia going a bit everywhere and trying to exchange this is the this is the plan we have but of course this is the formalistic choices for example we have Luanda Cassella which is a director from from Brazil living in Ghent or we have Lara Stahl which is a curator from from Amsterdam. And it depends from them how they decide to do it for example Luanda Cassella likes a lot of kind of playful university so she does a play that is called Killjoy Quiz. And she will work with people in that way. I think I would more work when I do then preparing my project. I'm more the assembly guy. So I like assemblies I like political actions. One plan I have. I would really as fast we can we can travel again I would like to go to the refugee camps. Open them making in the balls of Europe making their occupations giving houses to the people because the strange thing is in South Italy or in Greece where you have the biggest camps. There you also have the most of the houses just empty. So you have a lot of space that is not space and just because of the contradiction of the of the political system because these people is not legal. So I would use the theater as a machine of legalization and taking home, for example, that would be a project I would prefer to invest money in this than invest as I said in in making a beautiful little gadgets to make beautiful play in my big hole. So this is for me that a bit at least the beginning of when we can restart to really reinvent the act. It's not going about about going into the streets. I can imagine that somebody. And for example, if we come back to Peter Brooke, you can do in a very classical space. You can do something that is changing, you know, it's it's not about where you do it. It's perhaps even not about with whom you are doing it for me that's the context and the actors are extremely important. So all my aesthetics depend from where I do it and with whom, but you can have another approach. So I saw incredible plays that are absolutely not interested in what I am taking as an entry step to use the real act of theater. Fascinating. Interesting that you also you went to university you study to you also worked as a journalist remedy for journalists in a way you are prepared in a way for adapting, you know, new forms and to releasing things and that perhaps this is an additional qualification that helps to I think to find forms. Yeah, one, one thing that is important I think theater is a form of crisis. I think theater is not really existing in a in a in a just going on society what we had now for a long time. And I was raised in it was the idea of doing karaoke with some classics. And then on the little stages you would try out but take Shakespeare Shakespeare when he made his Hamlet. There were a lot of Hamlets he just could have used one, you know, and he didn't do it because he said no I have my ensemble, and I have my my interest and I have my public, and I want to do it now. And it's very strange that then we decided to his now who was a very specific now to kind of take it again and again and again and not adapt it to our now. And I think in moments of crisis for a moment. The whole story that it will continue forever as it was and you can do forever the same just a bit change from season to season breaks and you feel this time is over you have to invent something new. And that's why I'm extremely thankful to being here now, and have the chance to do theater and to think so. What do we really need. What means scattering what means an assembly what means presents what what is it actually. What is this act of together decide that this is reality and not that but this now. What is it. Yeah. This is this is an important question to ask so you are sure this is a real rapture we are living through now this is a real disruption. I think you can live the biggest disruptions and you see it in human history and you can just avoid to see it. And this is extremely dangerous. I think if we don't see it now if we don't. And that's why I'm kind of coming back again and again to what you could call the tragic knowledge that you understand that the time we are living is not only dramatic. It's tragic. I saw Steiner a very beautiful philologist who was teaching in Switzerland by the way in Geneva. He was writing a book called the death of tragedy and he was saying that for example when you compare Ipsen with Sophocles in the play of Ipsen. That's just drama because you get a bit of more women rights more more of whatever and everything will be fine. The society in itself is OK. You just give a bit more rights and a bit more identity politics and everybody will be happy every minority. But now we feel this time of neoliberal not changing everything but just find the compromise for everybody is over. Tragic times are here and we are we have to watch like this on our time because we don't do it of course we can go on for 20 years more for 30 years perhaps. But then it really will be too late and then we don't have any choice anymore and the objective powers will be too strong. So now we have still a certain space to navigate and I think we should we should we should really use it. We should use our knowledge if it's a journalistic knowledge or a scientist knowledge or a knowledge as an artist. It's a call and we should we should hear it. We shouldn't avoid it. We are coming closer to the end. So I think to say this is really this is a very serious statement that this is a tragic time you live in the crisis. We should actually experience it and the ideas the remedy also you know crisis and healing that but it is serious and be not to pretend it's a quick story that happened 2000 years ago. You're gonna know this our live in a way depends on on how we see and how interpret stories and how we react to it and it's about our lives actually and not what the lives of these people on the stage or the actors are representing it. This is really about us and is a closing question. There are lots of theater makers young ones who decide should I go in or out like you could be the young Miller out listening to me around. Now what would you say to a young artist when you said I was still sitting at home and studying and reading. And should I go into theater should I do art what kind of what kind of a twice. Would you would you give him in Thomas Austin miles and prepare you know this will be over nothing last forever the fight is coming afterwards. What is what what would you say what should people really do maybe our audience as you go but also as theater artists. What what is the what is demanded of them or us at the moment. I mean what I'm always saying to the young Miller house is. Connect and do one thing and do it the most simple you can. So I mean making artists taking decisions and you never know and this is perhaps another step of tragic knowledge that of course you don't know how. It will become you just try you fail you try again and you try and you try and you go on and then you should connect with the most interesting and most I don't know. For you most interesting people that you can react to faster that you could when you are alone. So for me the act of solidarity the act of togetherness is the most important in theater you can sit at home and prepare and read. This is important and it's beautiful as I said but after three four weeks. I mean for a theater maker that's not writing you know it's not how you how you how you can work you can only work collectively. And I think this is extremely important that even if you become older and you have more power of course and you are more alone and you can more decide and you let's depend from what the other thing. The more stupid actually you become the more disconnected. You become what you should do and what you what you have to do. You know I was I was reading in the last days I was reading Oedipus. Tyrannus or the King King Oedipus by Sophocles and the interesting thing is he's surrounded by experts and everybody from the beginning of the play on says you killed your mother you killed your father you fucked your mother you killed your. The reason of the of the of the of the virus. I mean it's the most interesting play about Corona by the way but it's not adapted at all. That's you. You are the problem your power which seems so rational is perverse. And I think to understand this that you actually know everything we only have to act we only have to take decisions. This is what I would what I would propose and I have always to propose to myself to I think okay let's plan the season. Let's write the play let's do this let's plan. It's impossible. I mean this is really tragic knowledge. It's impossible. Any plan in in in some way the interesting thing of the underlying curse that Lyos was his father was cursed because he abused molested a young kid a child which was in his care and he was cursed your son will kill you and sleep with your wife which was also didn't know about the underlying curses the invisible ones which we also dealing with and these are and formations and currents. You know we have to do it. Yeah. I think it makes us humble to understand that we are a person we are living in a cursed civilization. And that we from the West we did so many mistakes that it's fine we are cursed and perhaps we should now learn from the others. But somehow shut up and try to learn to learn fast. Yeah, this is this is a great great great advice Milo and thank you for taking the time. Thank you for taking this so serious and I hope also that your your golden book publications go great. I guess what to do with the is you're going to publish it yourself also. Yeah. Yeah, part of your golden book which is remarkable your filmmakers theater maker publicist journalists you write political activists really a model. Hansi's lemon said a house is like the theater it has many rooms and they are all the rooms for someone who does traditional comedy or two days or that you know but also you occupy a special place maybe unlocked with a key you know a room that might be all didn't know. It was there like remedy and so so many others and they're part of that permanent revolution and some say you know it takes 100 to 150 years from revolutions going from the most conservative then, you know and hitting to ultimately liberal things but it takes a while it takes years and it's nothing is fast and but we have to be on the right side and of history and of justice and social progress and you certainly are. And so thank you for for sharing your time tomorrow as you said we have the Richard Shackner is the great. Yeah, same. Big fan. Yeah, to hear what he has to say because he's also someone who really comments on on our society and he's always right on on target. We will have after no this year, who is coming from France and Guillermo Calderon will be with us and then also basil Jones a great theater artist from South Africa and works with puppets and great work. Did the white second the tooth commission and other things so it is really enlightening for us and it's a privilege to hear and listen and thank you really again for sharing and it's a privilege to be here and I will follow tomorrow as a spectator. Thank you. Thank you Milo and thank you all for listening I know so much content is out there we at the Segal always say we need great theater and performance but we also need a great audience and audience will do something so the audience is as significant and as important and this is one of the changes we Milo is fighting for it's about you who listen. So thank you and tune in again and thanks for howl around at Emerson College. We are hosting us and the Segal team Sun Yang Mei and Jackie and talk to you so hopefully one day we'll meet in a week's time. Bye bye.