 You know, thank you for joining us. I know it's, I think it's already closer in the evening where you are. So, Maya, where are you? What time is it? I am in my apartment in Tel Aviv. It's 10 past seven, still light outside. And it's good to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Where are both of you? Where are you now, Joshua and Ruth? Well, I'm in my apartment in Tel Aviv, right at the center of town, near the municipality. It is now, the sun is, well, it is dusk now, I would say, a very nice day, cool. Some, it's 23 degrees or so Celsius, centigrade. Birds are chirping outside. You can't hear them because they close the windows. And that's it. I'm in my room, very, very excited to share with you my thoughts, with your thoughts. It was a pleasure to listen to you. I think one of the lessons we have learned in the last three or four months is the importance of listening to other people. Listening to what they have to say, what they have to cry, what they have to shout or to whisper or sometimes when they shut up, also to listen to the silence. This is what I feel when this is one of my lessons from the last four months, the importance of listening and really interiorizing the suffering of others and to empathize with people who are suffering. This is what I can say was one of the lessons I drew from this lockdown that lasted here for at least two months, very, very severely, which is now loosening up a bit. But it is still, the situation is still unclear. People, you feel that they are uncertain about the future. I mean about the closest future. They don't know what tomorrow or next week. They will bring along and what will happen to their daily life, to their normal routine, so to speak. Everything is disrupted. So there is a feeling of disruption, mostly and mainly. That's what I feel. Maybe disruption is a key word here, a good word. Actually, I'm now in New York. I came here for the spring semester, but now I stay a little bit more because of this crisis, interesting crisis. And actually, when I came here in January, I thought I would be very much isolated. I would be here. I would not know much about what happens in Israel, like to be detached from it a little bit. But because of the pandemic, I found myself much more in Israel by Zoom and Skype and everything than I thought I would have been. And actually, I feel I have to say something now because you spoke so beautifully and so painfully about the events around George Floyd. And we in Israel have now our own George Floyd, which is a Palestinian boy with special needs who encountered soldiers, but he didn't really understand what's happening and they killed him. They just shot him. And this is something we don't know what to do with such a thing. We just don't know. And I wish that we had demonstrations that you have here that we had in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem because here this death around such an important power and maybe this power would lead to some action. And unfortunately in our country, isn't it? I don't know, Yoshua, Maya, you're there. It's around it, isn't it? I would like to add something to what you said. The atrocity of the event is even much worse than whatever you described because the man, he was a young man, he was autistic and he went out in the morning to go to his special school and on the way he met his teacher, a woman, she gave her testimony of what happened. She said that when the soldiers asked him to stop and he was frightened and he sought refuge behind her back. He reclined behind her back and he said to her, I am with you in a way saying protect me. And one of the soldiers, they were policemen, kind of policemen approached him and shot him at point blank behind the back of his teacher. She gave the testimony, it is awful. Now, I also wish that it will create a kind of shockwave in the Israeli public opinion. I am afraid it won't because we became so indifferent to death of others in our society because of the ongoing wars, atrocities and so on. So I think that our public opinion is kind of benumbed, not really a break. So if this event will not awake a wave of anger and protest and calling us to task, I mean to say what did happen to our society? How can we go on living with such an event taking place in our capital, in Jerusalem? So that's what I have to say, it's awful, awful. The event that took place there. And it proves that something very, very destructive happens to a society that is involved in an ongoing conflict. People talk about managing the conflict. You cannot manage a conflict for so many years. It destroys your soul, it destroys your morals, it destroys your humanity, once humanity, our humanity, I mean. And the lesson is that we have to put an end to this conflict as soon as possible. But what I'm afraid of is that the new future will only contribute to pouring fuel on the fire because our government presently is talking of... No, I have the word, it just kept me as a peah to... Occupy, no, not to occupy too. No, no, not to occupy, to... I'm checking. Sipoch, well, what's the word? It's... Expect to... To append. Append, to append, that's right. To append territories in the West Bank. And what I can foresee is that this is only going to create another wave of violence, probably. So I think that as a playwright, as people of the theater, we have to deal with the fact that something happened to us during these many years of the ongoing conflict that something was deeply damaged in our humanity. And how do we bring it to the stage? Now, the theaters should be ready or should even take the initiative to open themselves to deal with that reality and to confront the audience with the questions that this reality is bringing and bringing to the stage. I'm afraid that our mainstream theaters are not ready to... are not willing and not very ready to deal with those moral questions. Really, we find ourselves always finally bringing it up on the fringe stages in Israel, which are very active. And the fringe is doing its job, but it doesn't address the white public. And I believe that we should find a way to address the white public with those questions. And now with the corona and the corona crisis and the questions that it also confronted us with. Well, by the way, the world is annexation, the world that I was missing before. Annexation of territories, yes. Yeah, well, I talked a lot, so I hope that someone will pick up the thread and continue or confront me or whatever. I want to say first that it's important to say that it's absolutely not the first time that Israeli forces are shooting a disabled Palestinian person. And the Israeli public is not really... I mean, the media is usually not covering it enough and people don't care enough. And this passiveness is not something that is characterizing our society now, but as Joshua said, this is something that has been ongoing since I remember myself actually. And it's funny how once you put three Israelis on the same screen in the times of corona, we talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have to say that I feel hypocritical after a while of talking about it and being active politically and also writing political plays. Especially now, I feel, I don't know, there's some kind of feeling of hypocrisy to even talk about it if you don't do something meaningful. And the truth is that I also don't know anymore what I can do, if I can do anything. And now I'm seeing what's going on in the US and I'm thinking, I don't know, jealous is the right word, but I wish. And so many bad things are happening here. It's practically becoming a dictatorship and we're still sitting at home and we're not doing much. And I don't know, I wish to see some torches in the streets and they're not coming. And I don't know if I should be the first one carrying a torch or just wait for the one who takes it and starts running, but it's not happening here. And I don't know anymore why and how come? It's really astonishing. There's going to be a big demonstration on Saturday evening. Yeah, we've had demonstrations before. Well, we shall see what happens there. I don't know. We shall see how many people will come. Yeah. Every once in a while, we have a big demonstration and then we drink coffee and then we go home. But we'll see. Hey, I'm not losing my optimism. Don't get me wrong. But yes, let's see what happens on Saturday night. But what we can do and we are doing, I think, both of you, I'm trying to do it is to resonate this event in our work, both the coronavirus, which is a fantastic unimaginable event that really, as you said before, Frank, it's a wonderful image that had the roof open so we can now see some things that we didn't see before, maybe. And both the other horrifying events that, when they resonate in the work, it resonates somewhere in somebody's mind or heart. I know it's very small. It's very, very small. Still, it does something. Eventually it will create some change has to. Well, go to your very optimistic. I must say. It's nice to see. No, I believe I think that we have no other choice than to continue to do what we are doing and to try to somehow to influence the public opinion. The experience of the corona for me was a very interesting experience because what I was shocked by was the fact how easy it is to strike fear into the hearts of people. Our leaders, our Prime Minister, he was on television. And the first thing he said was he spoke about a catastrophe that humanity has not experienced since the Middle Ages, which is, of course, a huge exaggeration. And people were open to fear. They were, so to speak, they were ready to indulge in fear. Why do I say indulge in fear? Because when you are afraid, everything is justified. Among other things to stay at home, to put your head below the pillow, to cover your ears and to isolate yourself and to say, oh, the situation is so bad, I cannot do anything. And the situation was not that bad in Israel. After all, luckily enough, we had only 280 casualties. People died. And it is because the population in Israel is very young. The average age is below 30. And our medical care is good, so to speak, in spite of everything. So people were not left on the street to die, and people were not abandoned to their faith or to their poverty. There was no, I would say that we have been manipulated greatly, I mean, badly by our politicians. Because, again, this kind of fear that justified even the creation of a very strange coalition in Israel with politicians betraying their electors, their voters. And everything was justified by the fact that there is COVID-19 outside. Everything was justified by it. And I think that this is, we should fight against it. Therefore, I admire the demonstrators in the hundreds and cities in the United States who, in spite of the corona devastating those cities, they came out on the street and they did not care anymore about keeping two meters distance between one another. And they said by the demonstration that you cannot accept anymore the situation in which a young man is being strangled on the street because he is black. So I admire the reaction of the, and I still admire, I'm strongly, I would say, impressed by the reaction of the American public. And we have to learn from them. We have to learn how to react. And I think that this is one of the interesting and important lessons of what happens now in the United States when you see that the destiny of one person still counts and the blood of one person cannot be ignored. And this is a lesson that we Israelis must learn. That's what I feel. I'm sorry. I like Joshua. I'm not that convinced. I don't know for sure why we had so not too many casualties. We had a very strange situation. Very quickly, we went into a lockdown really quickly. I think one of the first right in the world. Yes. One of the earliest, I don't know. I think one very early in relation to other countries. Before Europe, let's say, two weeks, three weeks before. And what date was it? Wow. It was the 14th of March. March. Okay. March 14. The beginning of the lockdown. I don't know anyone who had Corona. And I don't think I have friends. I actually know two people. I don't think I have friends that live in Israel. And five more people that live in other places. And I didn't see. If I talk, if, if there was no media. In a world without media, I wouldn't know. But there was. An epidemic out there. And then I see on television pictures from Spain and from Italy. And it's horrifying. I can't say that my government is lying to me and that there is no political reason. I couldn't tell that to myself, although. Many people claimed that that's the situation that were being manipulated that were being deceived for political reasons. I have the tendency. To think in conspiracy. Or in. Yeah, maybe conspiracy is not the right word in the Israeli case, but in. I tend to believe that's my government doesn't. Take care of me. Or that's not its main perspective. But in this case, I was really confused and there was a load of information from all over the world. And. I don't think anyone can say how come I think we'll know that only retrospectively. What really. Yes, but you know that yesterday there was a checkup that was done about the. Immunity. Immunity reaction of. Of the people. Which is a different kind of checkup from. That they are doing with the saliva and so on. And they found out. That about 200,000 Israelis. Were infected by the Corona virus. By the COVID-19. Maybe I was too. Maybe you're too. Maybe I was too. That's. Yeah. Officially, there were only some 16,000 17,000 people who were diagnosed with Corona virus. But now we learn that there were more than 200,000 who. Who were infected by the virus and whose. Organisms. Defended themselves against the virus and they didn't even realize that the virus went through their system. So it is an interesting lesson to learn about the. The degree of, I would say, of. Danger with that virus, it depends probably a lot. First of all, the average age of the society. Of the whole nation. And secondly, of the state of health of the nation. And of, but if you have a population that is very young. The death toll is very low, very low. But the kind of panic that was created. Was totally exaggerated. I'm sure about it. I tend to believe so. Even the numbers are right. Even there were more than 200,000 people. Who got the virus without even knowing it. It means that the lockdown did not do much. Because because if it's a quarter of a million Israelis who had the virus. Anyway, I think that the importance for me at least is to think what kind of theater we have to do because we saw how vulnerable our theater was. Immediately the thing, the first thing that was. That was. Locked down and the shot and darkened. Where are theaters. And they are still darkened. And when they will be again, when the lights will go up again, we don't know yet what kind of. What kind of theater it will be. So I think we have to think. What is the lesson for us theater people. What can we do as theater people in order to confront. Efficiently. Such a pandemic that breaks out and disrupts as I said before our life. What can we do. This is a question that I'm putting to myself. Maybe observe. Yes. You wanted to say something. I'm sorry. No, I wondered what kind of thoughts Joshua had about it. The theater. Well, I had some thoughts and which I shared with the young students, theater students now. And I call it a commando theater. It's a kind of commando action of theater, which means not to rely anymore on the big holes on the big venues. But to create small groups. That will go to people's homes. And to perform at the people's homes or. On roof on rooftops of houses or. On such places where you cannot stop them. The theater from a continuing to add to a function. This is what I think. I call it the commando theater or guerrilla theater. Which means you in such a situation. Where you are kind of paralyzed. You have to find a way to continue your action in society because I believe. That one of the dangers is that. The white public will say, okay, we can manage without theater. Look, they were they've locked up the theaters for three months and we were okay. We watched television. We see all kinds of series on the soap operas and life goes on. So I think that we have to make the theater. More meaningful than it was before. And to make. As I said, to act as commando units. Small groups go to people's where they where they congregate. If it is a synagogue, if it is a mosque. If it is a rooftop, as I said before, I don't know. And go to the people again with the theater and not wait for them. To be allowed to enter the main venues once more. And to sit, you know, in capsules as they say, as they call it now. And to wear these masks over the face. Throughout the show. I can't imagine this happening in the theater anyway. Okay, so this is what what I think we should do. Ruth, you wanted to say something. Yes, I. I'm just, I'm still by the word that you should have said in the first place, the disruption concept. And. And, and you're talking about the situation disrupting the, the, the, the, the habits of the theater. And, and the question is, how can the theater disrupt. And this is like a concept we are exploring for quite a while. We had a laboratory, we just met you in Jerusalem when we had the Institute for Advanced Studies with Freddie and. And, and this is for me now a main issue and. And around the pandemic. I created with, with my theater group and event. Together with attitude on that. And we were reading the text of our tour. The theater and the plague, which is such a fantastic text. And, and the suggests are to suggest to look at the action of the theater, that is just like the action of the pandemic, which is to shake something, to disrupt something. Again habits to expose. You mentioned this word hypocrisy lies to take off the text. So, I think it reminds us the situation in a way reminds us what we have to do. So it was my theater we created a zoom event where we did an active and our tour, our tour, the reading of the text, which was actually to dismantle the text. To break it into, into why you need to, to, we created a pandemic where we explored the text with the body with the tongues with the teeth in a very active way. And in two language, we can do a lot of things. I mean, I understand. I said, you're sure that you say it's naive and, of course, we can question whether the theater or art have any power. Yeah, and I understand it. But this is what we know how to do so we can. We can work with our techniques and our ways in order to shake something and this is a good time to shake something because maybe what you were saying before is that in Israel, the public was not shaken enough because maybe because we are used to care of use we are used to go into shelters. It's not a new thing for us. We use for the government to make decisions that, that, you know, like by politics that they control our bodies, our, our ways of living. So maybe we were not it was not a big enough disruption and the theater must go on and keep the work going. Maybe maybe I'll just say there is a wonderful, wonderful Israeli poet, poet, and he said once in an interview or something, he said, language to the to the creator to the author is like a toy for a child. You don't know it until you break it. And only when you break it, you hear something the sound of the language and the sound of the language is meaningful. And of course sometimes it can resonate in the heart or mind of one person. It's a lot because it could be exponential. One person could do something to another person to another person to another person. If we don't have these beliefs, then we must stop doing theater because, you know, just to make fun for people who have a lot of money to buy tickets in the big theaters. What for? Yeah. I wanted to, to share some of the thoughts that I've been having during the lockdown. And it has been, I started thinking about it in the very early stages. That's again, two months ago, three months ago, when my thoughts were running really quickly and I evolved. But there was such a rush of streaming theater, live streaming theater performances all over the globe. And of course, one thing that the epidemic and theater share is that they both need a crowd. So they don't exist. And I was thinking theater must make itself essential. And it could have, it could also be the task of theater in these times, because if the result of the coronavirus crisis would be that people isolate and they don't think that gathering is something that's essential for them anymore, then I think theater should be the one, the medium that carries the flag of showing people why they should gather. But for that theater has to really make itself essential. And I'm not so much talking about content. I think content can vary. I don't think theater should only be political, although I strongly believe in that. I'm really talking about form. And that's something I've been very busy with also before the coronavirus. But now it's really, it was a real catalyst for me to think about the ways that theater uses its technology, the characteristics of the medium to tell stories. Because if you can stream it, then you're not using it. And because I think that film and, and I'm talking about realistic theater. I think film, television, and now even video games can do it much better, imitate reality. And I think that theater should not do that because if people say I could watch it online or I could watch it, I think that if you have a video registration of it, then there's no reason really to, if it's a life risk, then yes, then maybe it's not essential. And what I'm busy also, I'm writing my PhD about it, about the narratology of theater and how to use characteristics, how do you, film, filmmakers, the grammar of film is based on the medium, not camera movements. It's all, it's all essential to the structure of the narrative. It's not, it's not just aesthetics. It's really content and form are one. And theater, the characteristics of the medium of theater, which are the corporate presence of performers and the audience, the liveness, the materialism of things on stage, all these things should be incorporated into the grammar of the storytelling in such a way that you have, it's a different experience of perceiving a story. You have to be, you have to crowd. You have to be present in order to get the experience. And I think that especially theater directors, as a playwright, I really, in my plays, I try to stimulate such strategy. But of course, there is no really a theory of theater and narratology as there is in film. So directors sometimes do it intuitively, but it's not established. And I think this is, this should be a next step. That's what I'm busy with. I would like to react and say that first of all, it's very interesting that you're writing your PhD about it. I would love to read. And I have to wait. But I am patient, but I really have to tell you that I feel that forms are more political than content. Content can cover. I mean, there are a lot of theater plays that are talking about coexistence and very good, nice things. But the form is fascistic. And when you speak about points of view, the very issue of points of view is a polyphonic point of views is something that carries a message of liberty. So the forms, sometimes the forms, the rotten forms cover. No, no, no, no, no, no. They expose. The forms expose that the content is just speaking shallowly about something and not really activating some need or some inner power for doing something, for a change. And really I'm exploring with all the time the messages in the forms that are encoded in the forms themselves. And when you read a play or you watch a theater piece, you can decipher the deep content when you really observe the forms. This is really a very important thing for me now. I would also emphasize the importance of form. I think it has to do with the contents. Form is not standing by itself, of course, and there is no form without material. And there is no material without form. But what I think is that one of the lessons of the corona crisis is that people, many people become redundant. They are now talking about it, that the lesson that some enterprises learned is that they can do without 30% of their personnel. They've sent them out to an unpaid vacation. They got, I mean, the unemployed people on unpaid vacation were paid by the government, kind of minimal salary. And the enterprises learned an interesting lesson I read today on an economical newspaper in Israel, maybe that some of, well, 20% or 30% of the manpower that was put on unpaid vacation should not be re-employed by their enterprises. And the enterprises will become more, will maximize their rentability. So this is one lesson, I think, and not only lesson, but this is a reality that we have to make our audience aware of, that they may become redundant as people. And redundancy is a situation with which the human psyche cannot put up with. So I think that one of the things that the theater should do is to create a situation in which the spectator will be very interactive with the show, because theater has that kind of quality that it can create a situation of interactivity, well, which a film cannot do. A film, you watch a finished work of art, whereas a theater performance is something that happens now, which means it happens from minute to minute. And you can think of a form that will invite or provoke the interactivity of the onlooker, of the spectator. And it will give the spectator a feeling that he counts, that he's not the only... Yeah, well, he becomes an actor in a way, or he becomes active. One of the, what, sorry? In terms, spectator. Spectator, okay. Spectator, yes, it's a nice term. Anyway, so I think that this is one of the things that people of the younger generation are quite used to, I mean they are used to surf in the Internet. They are used to surf, which means to choose their links and to enter into the links that they have chosen and in the middle of, let's say, surfing into a certain location, they are changing direction and so on. So one of the, I say we, because I have been cooperating with an Austrian director by the name of Paulus Manker, and we created a 1996 kind of theater event about Alma Mahler. It was called Alma, which was a kind of journey show, and the audience was invited to behave as a camera, each person as a camera, which means you entered a location where a scene took place and you were allowed or you were invited to choose your distance from the actors. You were allowed to turn around them while they were performing and look at them from any angle you choose. You could come to an extreme close up to the actors, I mean to come as close as possible to the actors while they are performing and acting, and you were allowed also to stay from and observe the scene from a distance, behave as a camera. Now I had an idea following that experience because this show that we created in 1996 has been running for like 25 years. It was still shown last summer in Neuvin in a small town near Vienna, and the lesson that I learned from it was to allow the audience or to invite them to use their smartphones as cameras and not only to observe the action that is taking place in front of them in a scene to which they have entered, but to allow them to film the scenes and then to send the results of what they have filmed or recorded so to speak to a certain address and it will be re-edited into a kind of drama and they will be able to watch the drama that has been created, the video drama that has been created in which they have taken part as spect actors and then we can invite them again and create a kind of ongoing relationship with that audience that has been active during the show. In other words, to sum it up, I would say that because we are all now threatened by redundancy and I feel that we people of the theatre, we are the next ones to become redundant in our society and there are tendencies to say, well, why spend so much money on the theatres? And we can do it all over the cyberspace as we are doing now what we are doing. Yes, the Zoom, we are using the Zoom. I think that we are threatened by redundancy and we are not the only ones, but a big chunk of our society may become redundant in a short while. So I think this is one thing that we have and we can confront the people with and I would say if I would now address an audience of 30 spect actors in a kind of show and I would say, okay, who of you is on an unpaid vacation? Who is afraid of not getting his job again? Who is sure not to get his job again? What are you going to do with it? Well, I think that I agree with what Ruth said and what you said, Maya, that form counts very much and that form can be a revolutionary. If this form is dealing with material, with explosive material. If we are not dealing with explosive material, the form will not be revolutionary, but if we deal with TNT or with dynamite, then we have to handle it and we know that we are handling something that is explosive. And that's why I think that we have to look out now and to understand, to be very alert and to understand what is going on, what is taking place in our society because as Maya, you said it, I think, or a route that we are now in the danger of becoming a kind of dictatorship in Israel. I call it the monocracy, not a democracy, but a demonocracy, a kind of democracy manipulated by demons. The coronavirus is a demon. Then we have the demon of the outer enemies and so on and so forth. And so I think that we are, Western democracies are undergoing a very crucial development in these days, these very days. And we as people of the theater must be on the alert and not let it just go under our radar systems. That's what I have to say. So in that time, also in confinement and Maya, you spoke about it, also both of you, do you think your next work will be influenced by that? Do you think, are you already having some thoughts you might not have before? And also, what are you preparing? Let's say it's another half a year, perhaps a year. I don't know how it will be in Israel. It was successful if the numbers are right, the lockdown because maybe of that experience of a government that does that all the time. And people are used to obeying it in comparison to France, for example. But what will be concrete things you will be doing in the next half a year? Are you planning shows? Will there be, what do you hear? Will there be small audiences allowed or not? Are people out there that are saying we need the theater back? Is there anything that society asks you theater makers at the moment, say come back to this? And if so, what will it be? Well, as a play, Ruth, you go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, please. As a playwright, I busy myself less with those questions of inside or outside, or I write what I have to write, what I have the urge to write. And I'm lucky to have my next world premiere already in October in Manningen in Germany. And I'm already busy writing close to my first draft. They said it will be on stage. They said it will happen and theaters will open. Yes, they have very, very specific rules or I don't know. What is it? Every fourth seat, people will sit in every fourth seat on a big stage. And the actors cannot touch each other. For me, it's great for the way I'm writing. I think it's going to be very, very interesting to see what the director is going to make of it. The funny thing is that it's a play that I started to write long before. I could even dream of an epidemic in my craziest dreams. And when the epidemic started, I was a little bit panicked because I thought that's almost like I'm writing about it. I don't know, I think it's really not interesting to react on something while it happens. I don't think I have the perspective, I don't have the spatial or the temporal distance to reflect on it in an effective way. But it's not about an epidemic, but it's about people locked in the house. And I think that the situation gave me a lot of input because it's really about, in the end, it's about people and people that are in a very strong situation, uncertainty, and they have to deal with each other, not really knowing what's outside, what's inside, who's who, what are we facing, reflecting on the past. That's what I'm busy with at the moment anyway. You said it's a catalyst, this time it's a catalyst and forms are changing, but what will be different? If it's possible to point at that, what changed in your writing? Again, as you said that I said, it's a catalyst and it's just gave me more motivation to be busy with the same things I was busy with and I'm really looking all the time for ways to tell stories in a way that can reflect somehow our perception. Young people don't go to the theater in Israel, at least that's what they say. And I'm not talking about young people like 20 years old, just people that were born into screens. I think their perception of reality is very distinct. I'm really on the verge of that generation, but the single perspective of the realistic theater has to offer is not communicating with our perception of reality anymore and I'm really busy all the time with dissecting the mechanisms of the narrative and I'm doing it in my writing to stimulate directors also to come up with interesting forms on stage and I just took it a step further and if one looks at a series of my plays then you can see how I keep developing it, thinking how we can tell stories in ways that are as complex as we experience reality. Since I'm working with a very small theater group in Tel Aviv so technically we have no problems actually because anyhow we work in small venues, anyhow we work in houses, anyhow we are in a very flexible situation with our performances. They don't need big sets or big, I would never do things in this big remote theaters where the actors are so remote from the audience. So we have no technical problems and we did take the time of this, this was like a gift of time that we can't perform in this month so we could go inside ourselves, explore our work, our desires and when I think forward actually I'm thinking about Walter Benjamin that he's talking about the storyteller and he's saying that the storyteller, he has an advice but by telling something about an old story, something that happened in the past, he's actually talking or giving advice to a story that is now being ongoing. So I find myself somehow thinking a lot these days about old myths, all the Hebrew myths and I don't have any idea how does it connect to the situation but that's what comes through me talking through very old scripts. Maybe something will happen out of it. Well, shortly before the corona crisis broke out I finished writing a play about people competing with robots or robots competing with people and kicking them out of their jobs and the play has been now translated into Chinese Mandarin and it's going probably to be performed in Beijing in the coming season and it has been translated into German as well. I wrote it in rhymes, the whole play. So how could it be in Mandarin? Yeah, well they can rhyme in Chinese Mandarin as well. They can rhyme. Yeah, well of course. And so the play is about, I would say, well why did I write it in rhymes? Because the people are trying to outsmart the robots but they find out that the robot is rhyming as well as they are and even better than they do and there is a kind of competition in the beginning and the ongoing competition then, of course, of who is rhyming better, the people or the robots and at the end you don't know anymore who is outsmarting whom. Because we are confronting the now a situation where robots are almost full and total imitation of a human being. You don't know anymore if they feel anything or if they pretend to feel but they can have reactions as if they have some feelings and then you ask yourself, are we robots? Are we pretending that we have some feelings or what is robotic about the human being and what is human about the robots? Well, the play is dealing with those questions in a way and I'm very curious to see what the directors will make of it when it gets on the stage from the page to the stage because it's meant to be with the music and the singing and movement and so how will the robots move and of course the idea is that the robots will be played by live actors and I think this in itself is a kind of challenge so this was my last, my most recent work and I'm still into consulting and talking with the musicians who are composing the music for the show. Yeah, it's a big question that in the mind of artificial intelligence we are all handicapped because our thinking in their mind is very, very limited and where does it go? Together, one question to you guys and I hope it's a kind of a right question Brett said, you know, basic function of theatre is a bystander sees a bicycle accident, runs into a car, a cop comes and the cop said, what happened? And the bystander acts it out and said, well, I was standing here, I was walking and then the person came from here the car came here, the bike, but he flipped over and I think the car driver didn't pay attention or the bicycle rider, you know, did something wrong. He said, this is what theatre is, we show on stage something of what happened, systems, it's no longer about individual fades, he loves stories or whatever there in a way what happened in New York to come back you know, the film and I think it's a 17-year-old woman who filmed the murder of Floyd, you know, this is what happened. And Susan Sontag wrote that great essay significant one, I re-read it about the suffering of others, about the images of suffering what they do to us and she goes back to quotes from the Ilias, from the Ulysses from Michelangelo's drawings how we instructed artists to draw images of war Goya about the Spanish Civil War about, of course, images of a Holocaust, the Vietnam War civil uprisings and civil struggle in the 60s, repeating of images and she says, you know, what will we remember about the Holocaust? What is the image? Do we really meditate on what it was? The image shows the end, the death, you can even own the image. All these questions and she is kind of hesitant, if I understand right, to say, you know, that they really even communicate what really happened, this bright set of photography about the Ford car factory doesn't really say much about the Ford car factory because she mentioned the images also of course of a Holocaust in her essay very central part in her essay how do you all think about images like the ones we see now how does one deal with it and what do they carry in them and how do we as theater artists who also have time and duration and how do we act it is that change something what we saw there and we talk about change in art and theater and the contribution we make but how do you deal with all these images for sure you must also carry within yourself and in your work, you know, you wrote about Holocaust for example, yeah. I think that, well, it is different from one playwright to the other the importance of images and the relationship between image and word image, visual image and language and of course in the theater you deal with images but you deal also with language and how do you deal with it I am very much I would say influenced by Sartre's thinking about the situation the situation is the that part of reality in which we are involved and in which we are expressing our values bringing them into action and revealing or showing or revealing who we are what we are and the situation for me the situation is very important so, well, you know there is that scene of the cameraman in the film the cameraman by Basta Keaton yeah Basta Keaton where he's filming a row taking place struggle between two guys in Chinatown I think and then a knife is falling on the side from the hand of one of the guys and the cameraman rushes takes the knife it gives it back to the one of the opponents and goes back to film the event he becomes involved in the event and you don't know anymore if he's looking for a good image or for good footage or he was so much involved into the situation that he forgot that someone is going to pay with his life while he's filming and what is more important for him the filming or the well, is he aware of the situation in which he is involved and this is one of the things that I felt when I was writing about the holocaust when I wrote my play Geato I was at moments it was based on description of situations that took place the situations that were described in diaries of people who were involved in action at the time of the holocaust and I found myself sometimes so involved in the situations so fascinated by the situations because they were fascinating that I enjoyed bringing into the play things that are monstrous and it shocked me because I felt myself in the situation of the cameraman of Buster Kitten who is so much involved with his art with his profession that he forgets that he takes the knife and brings it into the hand of the killer in order to show the killing so this is an interesting question that you have put here and I think that we have in our profession, in our art it's a very dangerous art because you bring to the stage things that are sometimes showing the evil side in the human being the evil part in human situations and we all know that there is nothing more enjoyable on the stage than to play out and to act out situations in which the evil qualities of the human being are being exposed or being put into action so this is one of the things I don't know we deal with the evil of our time in a way in the images and in the language that's what I can say as I said earlier I'm busy both in my writing and in my research I'm busy with theater and narratology and one of the basic the questions that narratology asks is who speaks that's the narrator and who sees and that's the focalizer I also wrote my master thesis about it it's called Focalizing Buddies that was published in 2010 I think theater and other unlike the screened media where the camera is hidden one of its forces is that it can show who creates the image I'm very much influenced by my professor from the Amsterdam university and the question of who owns images is very strong and I think that theater can expose the mechanisms of the image in a way that Ruth talked about film the form of film is fascist or something or aggressive forms so I think that's what we mean that's what I mean that it eliminates its violence and it can hold the camera it's very interesting what you both said and it's a very complex question so I could just react very little about it I find myself trying to avoid direct images and actually create if I check the works I'm trying to do there is always a gap between the image and the speech or the image and the meaning of the image so through this gap ask questions about representation and by asking questions about representation you can ask questions about reality I can just give a very simple example I once did a piece about a war that was in Israel the war that was here in 73 but I did it in 2000 something and naturally the text of the writer dealt a lot with images of war of guns and explosions and tanks and all kinds of things but on stage you saw none of it so by asking yourself how would you put on stage an image of shooting or of explosion of being shooting somebody else or being shot by somebody so by asking what would be the image you begin to ask more questions about what is it to shoot at somebody being in a situation that somebody shoots at you so I put in question the connection between the image and the meaning and I think by this question we try to correct something in the solid knowings of what are we talking about and ask new questions and these are incredible questions we had earlier on Joe Joseph Atkins who runs the New Black Fest in New York City is a great group of writers and they have been at the Seagal with the Trevor Martin killings and others they wrote commission plays and then of course it's that recording of a handy of that 17 year old you know so it's a big question now what does it need what's the time, the atmosphere and the confinement is it connected to COVID when does something change we in theater and performance have always been historically over centuries as part of the complex struggle for freedoms and we are continuing it and all you of course are examples of thinking and acting and putting something into a form that reflects what we see and helps is part of the change of the world slowly also coming towards the end of the show what do you feel is the biggest we talked about but still what do you feel to talk to young artists as Joshua said what do you feel is the big lesson what really shall we take with us from this time and not forget and what is something we are still in confinement here so what do we still should focus on what do you all feel is essential to ask questions I don't think anyone has really answers at the moment of what should come next that's what I think well I would add to it that one of the lessons is not to take authority for granted whoever pretends to talk to you authoritatively you should suspect that there is some second thought behind it some interest that the guy is trying to to garner and to to achieve this is one of the lessons that I drew from the last few months I'm watching television with a great feeling of suspicion that people who have the authority in their hands they are abusing of it they are not using it correctly I don't trust them and I think that one of the lessons is to tell people or to teach people or to ask people or to share with people the feeling that they are responsible for what they think they are doing and they should not kind of free themselves of their responsibility because there is someone who is taking their responsibility I think one of the lessons is that we have to renew the foundations of democracy and to look into it very carefully democracy has been revealed in its weakness I think in the last three or four months and we have to make in Hebrew there is a word tikkun tikkun is correction or repairing and I think our democracies need a lot of tikkun a lot of correction and repairing and this is one of the lessons that I would like to share with my audience in the future that we have to take care of a big tikkun of our society well I see it in our society in Israel I see it now in what happens in the United States I don't want to tell the Americans what they have to do with their society but it looks like they need a lot of tikkun in the United States and this is true about our countries as well and about our society of course too tikkun wow you know things I'm still in the class I am sorry I haven't learned the lesson yet it's still ongoing I can't conclude anything maybe I can just say something small because after the spring break we went to Zoom teaching I was teaching here at Juilliard and I was teaching storytelling so I decided to give up all my plans and ask the students to tell stories about the situation and one of the students that was so beautiful her reaction and her way to talk about the situation is that she recalled a story about a Russian cosmonaut that was isolated so she had these questions about isolation and the Russian cosmonaut that was isolated in his spacecraft and suffered a lot from some things there but then he decided to open himself to this situation of isolation and found a moment of bliss so I really hope I will find also sometimes a moment of bliss but I haven't found it yet yeah this is incredible times and we do live in and this is good advice to question or to say we stop and we ask students questions or ask others, we listen and to find ways to reinvent what we are doing it's not something that we did on our own but still it is a chance and I think the world has already changed and we will slowly discover what comes out of it it's really wonderful of all of you to join us and sorry that is such a short time and of course each one of you could have been the guest but I think all together I think we got also a polyphonic view of the situation and thank you for sharing also so honestly and openly the situation and your country in Israel is really inspiring that is really taking place here in the US and yes we do need a lot of tikkun and I hope it will happen so next week again we will have Jonathan McCoy from the here from New York, Tamela Woodard, James Krungs Nigel Smith, Woody King Jr. to talk about what we are going through here tomorrow we will have Avra Cedropoulou from Greece and she will tell a bit about the situation there the virus but also the situation with refugees and what's happening in Europe how are we dealing with this in the middle of all the corona crisis Ashley Tadai who did Carol Churchill's play Matt Forrest about a revolution uprising about the killings in the streets of Romania a moment perhaps closer we are now than we ever have been and the way she created something for her software colleagues and coders where she combined I think a life theater and studio zoom art to something really interesting a way of art I feel that new art piece I saw that was interesting what she found and so we will talk on that on these new forms we really do need to retell the same stories we had so really thank you for sharing for asking questions better questions after this and let's stay in contact and the Buddhists they said about art and theater is a joyful participation in the sorrows of others and the sorrows of the world and I think this is what we have to but at the moment we are angry and very upset but as you pointed out and that's a good reminder that this uprising is there that people get outraged and that is something that it's a good that it will come out of it so thanks to Hal Ron for hosting us CRTJ and Travis thanks to my single team Andy and San Young and I hope to hear and see you again all over in New York we have a cup of coffee to our listeners thank you for taking time out of your life I know how much it's out there how busy and how full days get it's important to listen and that you are out there listening also to our colleagues and friends from around the world the artist is of real significance it's meaningful for them but it's also hopefully meaningful for you and Emmanuel from the Tatlid Avile in Paris said you know it's also important now that we do a change ourselves that we do an authentic change and that we look at ourselves he for the time said I'm not going to look at any images they're changing their theatre coming coming out of this and I think also that's what I hear from all of you today so thank you for sharing and to our audience stay tuned and stay safe and I hope one day we will have a big theatre festival an expression of art and life here in New York where you all and your work will be shown so talk to you soon and thank you for sharing Thank you very much Joshua Amaya Thank you so much