 We're at the Martin Segal Theatre Center at the Graduate Center CUNY, Midtown, Manhattan. It's 12 noon, and it's slightly getting colder in New York City. And people on the farmers markets will seem to be one of the very few places where one can go and see these groups of people. They're already wearing scarves and longer jackets and everybody looks in other's eyes and who can feel that sense of uncertainty, of not knowing what will happen, what is going on, what will be, and these catastrophic handling of the corona situation of the US government. These days in Washington seems like the end of an open empire or something. US empty halls and the staff infected and people not telling the truth. And now Trump calling for imprisoning Joe Biden, like the burst of dictatorship moves one can think of. And in these days, I think it is important also to really question what we are, where we come from, where we are going, what art and theater is all about. And with us today, we have a worker in the vineyard of theater, as Tom Walker said on Wednesday about his work with the Living Theatre. We have the greatest Avianos Stanescu with us, a Romanian playwright and poet, and she is based in New York, is in the New York state teaching in Ithaca. And she has done many, many plays, I think the bio is listed on the how long and on the seagulls side by Lenin Shul, Waxing West, the Iocastas she did with Shackner, Zoom birthday party, which she now did and many, many, many other things on her credit. She has an MFA in Traumatic Writing from NYU and Performance Studies. And she also founded the Immigrant International Artists and Scholars in New York, an organization, IASNY. And so Savyana, welcome, you have been to the Seagull Center many times. So where are you at the moment? Thank you, Frank, for inviting me. I am in Ithaca, New York this time. So, yeah, I teach in Ithaca College. We teach online, but I left New York City in March, late March, actually, after the theaters got closed. At that time, I was working on a project with IASNY, indeed, at the New Recon Poets Cafe. We have these regular project, Liberty's Daughters, Immigrant Women's Monologues. And at that time, we were working to present them live at the New Recon Poets Cafe in East Village. But then we presented them online. And we've done actually three more of those events. And another one is coming up on October 25th with some great playwrights and writers presenting Immigrant Women's Monologues. So is it the New Recon Poetry Cafe with Daniel? And so you write those monologues? You co-write? For these particular events, I curate and host the evening. I organize it. So we have great playwrights. I present one of my monologues as well. But I also, of course, want to give other voices a chance to show their work as a community of writers who write immigrant stories. So for the October 25th one coming up, we have great playwrights like Corey Thomas, Nancela Said, Jessica Litwak, Alice Ifcoe, and Mariana Karenio. And others, they will present a short monologue. And this is what we are doing. That's part of my community building and highlighting other immigrant voices or immigrant women's monologues. Yeah, next to your also successful careers playwriting, you always have been someone who also organizes, curates, produces. And you have seen this as part of your work. You contacted us also. We were on contact. Our prelude festival that's coming up October 27 has the theme of revolutionary sites and sites and the idea of site and also the websites and the sites. And you said you were working on a project at the time in Bucharest that is connected to that and this idea of crisis, of revolution, of something that a turning point to revolve. So tell us a bit about it. Yeah, yeah, now, as you know, the revolution is a topic and an important concept and idea and everything around revolution I care about. Because as a young college student in Romania, I was in the streets at the revolution against the totalitarian regime of dictator Ceausescu. All I knew in my life was dictator Ceausescu's regime. I was born during his presidency. So for us, it was this huge change to be in the streets. Many people died. And then how old were you and what happened on the streets? Well, I was a college student. And on December 21st, basically when in Bucharest, things started, they started a little earlier on December 16 in Timisoara, a town in Northwestern Romania. And many people died there. And Ceausescu. They died because. They were killed by the political police and the dictators of people. They were shot on the street. Yeah, and buried actually in secret, many people. They were trying to keep this secret. And then Ceausescu organized a sort of meeting for the working class and the youth on December 21st in Bucharest in the hope that he would convince the people that no, everything is fine in Romania. And that's when actually everything started, the unrest. So people started to boo him and the whole revolution started with the masses booing him. And of course people got killed, got shot by the time the army and other political police agents. And what happened, I'm gonna make a very long story short. On December 22nd, actually the army turned against the dictator. And that was of course a turning point for us as well. That's when the revolution was somehow officially winning on the national TV. People went and claimed the victory of the revolution. People still got killed and we didn't know for sure who's shooting, who are these people still shooting us. And this was one of the slogans on the street at that time, who is shooting us. So it took a while and then Charles Esquin, his wife actually were put on a short trial, controversial trial and they were executed on Christmas day and the execution was broadcast for all of us on the evening of Christmas evening in 1989. Kind of a bloody, a bloody revolution like the French Revolution where blood actually was flowing completely. Yeah, so that's why for me, these times of unrest actually these days and these past months brought me back this feeling about the revolution of course with Black Lives Matter and people who really need to change the system because the system here has been oppressing Black people and people of color for so long. So there is a change in the air here as well I feel. And people are indeed trying to change the system in theater as well in many ways. And I feel that vibe honestly in the air, of course I don't want to have any violence or nobody wants that, but there is a feeling of change of a big change that is happening and has to happen. And I know that in theater it happens on many levels with the pandemic people, theaters are revisiting the ways in which they make theater and they are revisiting the inclusion, the diversity and inclusion strategies they have in order to fully include the artists of color. How was your experience? You in a way also an immigrant or you're living in exile, you are from Romania. You also thought, Roma, if I understand right, you came to the US, which has been accused as the DIY theater as institutional racism. How was your experience in the US? Oh my God, yeah, no, this is such a long story and I'm really trying to make it short. Don't have to, we have time. Okay then, then I'm gonna start from the revolution. So basically after the revolution, I always wanted to actually be a writer, an artist. You were already right during the revolution. What happened? Was theater done? Were performances part of it? Where was it? I was a poet, I was a poet at the revolution but at that time I couldn't publish because there was censorship and my poems were too dark. So there was censorship and they would censor different topics that couldn't be published. So the revolution actually meant freedom of expression for me maybe in the first place. So I could finally start writing for the free press. So I couldn't be a journalist at that time. Journalists meant lots of propaganda before the revolution, obviously. So there was no point for me to really be a writer because I'm the type of writer who likes to speak truth to power. So I'm always the type of writer who goes for the difficult topics, challenging the status quo and that couldn't be done during the dictatorship. But I started to work in the free press. I worked for major daily newspaper like Adevaro, The Truth which was one of the most circulated newspapers. I started to also work for TV to be a contributor for Radio Free Europe. And the 90s for me were part of this great energy of change. And I was in it. I was inside it because as a journalist I was covering all the hot topics. I even got to interview the first human prime minister of Turkey, Tan Suchiler. I was on the plane after the embargo with Serbia the plane to Belgrade to report on that. So it was a very exciting time. And this journalistic spirit never left me. Even in my place I always try to challenge and interrogate the topics that are hot that address our immediate history. So after a while actually working as a journalist I published three books of poetry and my third book of poetry called The Outcast was actually a dramatic poem, my long dramatic poem about a woman running from everything. And that dramatic poem got actually produced in theaters. It got produced in a theater in Galat, in the Southern Romania and different actors would perform my monologues. Actually my poems, but they were considered monologues. So, you know, I made this transition to theater almost because people started to perform my work. In 1998 I was invited to Paris to do that with Gerard Philippe de Saint-Denis for a festival called Du Monde d'Anteer and they selected one playwright actually from each country that was part of the World Cup, the Soccer World Cup. And from Romania they selected me. I was considering myself a poet but they called me a playwright. They produced this Outcast dramatic poem and I started to believe I was a playwright actually. It was also funny that our soccer team lost to Cameroon, I remember and the newspapers would say our boys lost but Saviana Stanescu is still in competition. So it was interesting and cool for me to become a playwright that way. But I needed to study playwriting because, you know, I'm this type of lifelong learner and student and we didn't have dramatic writing or playwriting departments in Romania at that time. Late 1990s. Lots of European countries didn't exist. Even in Germany you would not be talking about it. Yeah, that's why I was actually very happy when I was offered a small fellowship to go to study playwriting in Germany at the International Summer Academy in Rur, in Bohem. And I studied in English with David Harrowar, Scottish playwright, Olivier, Olivier Award winner and Phyllis Nash, who's an American playwright and screenwriter she wrote the screenplay for Carol. I think she's based in LA now. So that's how I actually brought my very first play, short play in English, Final Countdown. And then that play I worked on the Romanian version. It got translated into French as well. It got published in Paris. So I was a little bit up on the wave in the late 90s in Romania and Europe a little bit. And yeah, the roads were opening up for me. I won the best play of the year, UNITER Award in 2000. UNITER being the theater guild of Romania and they have many awards for actors, directors, of course, producers, set designers, but they also have won award to the best play of the year. And I won it in 2000 for the Inflatable Apocalypse. So things were opening up. I got invited to, I got accepted into the Royal Court Theater International program. But at the same time, I got the Fulbright grant to go to New York University as a Fulbright fellow. So it was a difficult decision. That was with the Elise Dobson was in London, Royal Court, the internet. Yeah, I didn't go to Royal Court. I went to New York. So basically what happened at that time I was actually on a fellowship in Vienna, a Kulturkontakt fellowship. So things were happening. I was a writer in residence to work on a play about Egon Schiele. So Kulturkontakt, which is a great organization offering fellowships to artists to really work on projects got me to Vienna for three months. And when I got the Fulbright fellowship that was a huge turning point for me. I didn't come just as a visiting artist. I decided to get enrolled again as a student a graduate student in performance studies at New York University, T School of the Arts. And that was because in Germany actually I met Barbara Kirchenblatt-Gimblett who's a professor at NYU Tish. And I worked with her we did a science-specific project in the Tulfurine mine, I remember, in Rur. And it was fascinating. So I realized that my world was somehow small. I needed to go and understand more about other cultures about other people. And BKG helped me to get accepted with the Fulbright fellowship at NYU. And actually that's where I met Richard Schechner who was already a legend in Romania as well. So it was huge for me to get to be his writer-in-residence and to work together on Yocastas and Yocastas Redux. It was actually the first time I was writing in English such an important work of full-length play. So that was in a way the best school for me to write in English. I wrote for Richard so many scenes and not all of them made it of course in the final script but that was the beauty of it. That would Richard Schechner, you as a playwright need to be in rehearsals with the actors, with the director, with the creative team. And I would write scenes and we would try them with the actors. And it's such an interesting and collaborative process. And I loved to work with Richard and that was a big point for me. And then I was offered a fellowship to do an MFA in dramatic writing at NYU. So I stayed a little longer, especially because actually when I got to New York, it was first, it was two weeks before 9-11. So we experienced the 9-11 moment during the first days of school at NYU with the performance studies colleagues. And for us the, you know, 2001 and 2002 became this major year of transformation. All our work was somehow connected to 9-11. We all bonded so much because we were part of New York at that time, you know, when the city was wounded. So we all felt New Yorkers, like we are New Yorkers. And ever since I fell in love with New York and I still love it, I feel I'm still a part of it, even if sometimes I'm in Ithaca, sometimes in Bucharest or in other countries of the world. I think it was Hans here who talked about that we need to reflect, you know, on the awareness of the complexity of a historical situation that poetry and theater is part of the reflection of it. And so you were there for that quite, you know, quite a quite traumatic revolution in Romania, which has been still talked about as something that's very different than what happened in East Germany, they went on the streets, but there was never, you know, a fight for it. Actually, it's solidar knowledge. I think the Polish movement accused the East Germany that was not a revolution to call for it. But I think they really did went out, they put their lives at risk, but it was very different than what you saw, you saw 9-11 and now you feel something in the atmosphere. We said, it reminds you of the complexity of these historical moments where life changed, where the world changed. What traces do you think will be left, what should people be working on at this moment now? What do you think? Well, first of all, you know that I was in Romania during my sabbatical semester in the fall of 2019, precisely to be there at 30 years after the revolution and to write and develop a play about the Romanian revolution in Romanian. So it was very powerful for me to go back and bring my knowledge of dramatic writing and craft back to Romania and the new play development process, which is not so well-known over there, to bring it back and develop on display called Kilometreur Zero, Kilometreur Zero, The Revolution Project to my Romanians. We developed it from scratch, first with four actors. So when I was in residence at the National Museum of Literature in Bucharest and then I directed two stage readings at the Cultural Center of Bucharest in October and December, 2019. The first one was part of the International Theater Platform, the Bucharest International Theater Platform. They commissioned us first to present and actually to develop this play about the revolution. And then I came back to the US, to New York, actually in January, 2020. And I was working in New York, as I said, when the pandemic happened. And then I got here in Ithaca to teach. But a young director in Romania, Andrei Majer, a very talented director, very visual wizard of stage images, he attended the stage reading. He loved the play and he proposed it to Odeon Theater in Bucharest. Odeon is a very prestigious theater in Bucharest, Broadway-like house, very beautiful. And Andrei worked with four actors from the Odeon during the summer. They rehearsed with masks on and it was very difficult and very brave of them to rehearse at that time. But finally, with a very big and interesting set that was created by Konstantin Chebotario, a wonderful set designer. And these four actors from Odeon, Ioanna Bugarin, Diana Giorgian, Nicoletta Lefter and Alexandru Papadopoul, who are both film and theater actors, worked so hard and they all managed to open actually the play in a very visual multimedia production on September 27, 2020, just a few weeks ago. They had a few shows I hear. It went very well. I got many messages. I didn't see the production. And unfortunately yesterday, theaters got closed again in Romania because the COVID cases spiked again. So they had a run of 10 days, incredible. So Saviana, I think I'm not miscounting, it's 30 years since that December uprising. Does it take 30 years? Will it be 30 years for artists to work on that time we live in now? Well, for me, it took so long to be able to write about the revolution. I remember in 1990, immediately after, Kerry Churchill, a British playwright that I admire, came to Bucharest with Mark Wink-Davie and today did a workshop and research on the revolution. Then they went back to Royal Court Theatre in London and Kerry Churchill wrote this wonderful play, Med Forest, they opened at Royal Court Theatre. And ever since, Med Forest is one of the most produced plays and maybe the most well-known play about the Romanian revolution. So I feel that maybe British playwrights and US playwrights, many of them, might be better than us, the Romanians at responding to their own history or to the events that are hot. And this is what I learned actually by studying in New York and NYU and working in New York for so long that it's important to be there and to write a play to respond to your own history and to your own identity. So for me, it became a sort of self-imposed mission as well that I needed to go back and get some sort of closure on those events for me and maybe my friends and some of the Romanian people and to interrogate those events. So we can bring a perspective from inside as well. I mean, I really appreciate Med Forest. I think it's a great play and it was needed. It's important to have perspectives from outside but it's also necessary to have some views and perspectives from inside the culture. So that was one of my main motivations besides the personal needs for closure and for interrogating those events for really trying to figure out what they meant for me, what they meant for our friends. And I must tell you that the talkbacks that we had after the presentations were so powerful. Young people in Romania, they were saying, wow, I didn't even know about these things. It's so great that you are doing this because we get to finally talk about the revolution. We don't learn about it in the history of textbooks. Why don't we? So I felt that I brought a small revolution as well in just talking about certain issues that people don't talk enough in Romania. For instance, I have a gay character he the character would be based in Berlin and he's married over there or happy marriage. They adopted a daughter but in Romania, LGBTQ issues are still problematic. Homosexuality was criminalized until 2002. So there is a lot of stigma that's still associated to LGBTQ issues. So I felt that it was important to bring this character on stage. I actually invited the New York actor, Romanian actor, Philip Condescu to read that character and to talk about his experience a gay man in Romania during the totalitarian system and after. Then I brought many feminist teams on stage. So I feel that I'm doing something necessary over there although it's hard for me. It's hard for me to go back and to write in Romanian. And I think I'm trying to do the same here in the US and it's hard here as well. It's hard to be a immigrant writer. How do you see like Carol Churchill saw the revolution or whatever, so how do you look at the New York or American theater system? How did you experience it? Yes, I feel, yeah, there's a lot to say but I definitely feel it's very hard for us international artists, international writers in particular because I feel that the directors or set designers because they have mainly a visual vocabulary, their work can be easier understood and accepted and admired, but for writers and especially writers like me who write in English. I haven't worked with a translator since 2001. It's very important for us to also feel that we belong here as immigrant writers and our work matters as much as the work of US-born writers. So for me, especially it was very hard because I got here in my early 30s. It's one thing to start writing English after you went to school or high school here in the US and another thing to come like me and write your first place in English in my early 30s. But I still think that I've been doing a good job and I have many plays that have been produced of Broadway and downtown and in regional theaters but I must not lie, it's a huge struggle that I constantly I try to get better and better. And now after 19 years in the US I feel that my writing has finally gotten more sophisticated and this is the moment when I feel, yeah and now I need more work and more recognition. Now I finally am a 19 year old American writer writing in English. So yes, so I'm trying hard to balance my own work with the work that I do for the community, for the international community, for the work that I do for my students because I teach playwriting, I produce the new play incubator, a festival of new plays by students and alumni, at Ithaca College. So I feel that I've been doing a lot for international exchange, for promoting international playwrights but how and when do I find enough time and resources to focus on my own work because you need to make a living, you need to have some money to pay the rent. So it's been a constant struggle for me as well. I just wish I would get some of those big fellowships that would allow me to just focus on writing and my own artistic work for a couple of years but you know, probably not. So I do the best thing, the best next thing I try to teach and I try to do my artistic work. And in terms of theater during the pandemic, well, actually we did lots of online theater. I worked with the Cherry Art Space in Ithaca. They actually opened their space a few years ago with a new play that I wrote for them, What Happens Next? What Happens Next is a sort of science fiction play and they opened a new space that they built from scratch in Ithaca. Cherry is a very experimental and interesting place that not many people know about because it's not in New York. And they also commissioned six international playwrights. We had them a very cool, I think online show back in May, you know, the beginning of online theater. And my play, Zoom Birthday Party was produced as part of that project. It was very exciting to write a play for Zoom. And actually that play now will be presented in the National Theater Festival in Romania. They asked me to provide Romanian translation so they can put subtitles. So it will be presented at the beginning of November at the National Theater Festival in Romania. I just got some emails to make this happen. So I'm happy that in a way the pandemic put me back on track with the work I do in other countries and particularly in Romania. I wish there was more of that happening with New York as well. I wish that the New York City theaters would work more with global writers and immigrant writers. At this point, I only got a commission from a theater company called Transforma for a science play festival. So I wrote for them a play called Zebra 2.0, a play about the friendship or maybe love between an artificial intelligence and an undocumented janitor. So I'm very excited about that play but I don't know when they will be able to produce it. So I do have another short play, Don't Dream, a monologue of an undocumented worker that can be presented by actresses of any ethnicity and race. And I was very happy to have this short play presented by the National Black Theater, by the American Slavery Project, by the Royal National Theater in London as part of events regarding women's rights to vote in London. And actually right now it's still online with two other plays by Judy Tate, four-time Emmy winner Judy Tate. And she's the leader of American Slavery Project and they have this project, Black Women and the Ballad. And I'm very honored to be included in this project with my short play, Don't Dream, performed by a wonderful black actress, Lynette Freeman. And that's still online. Yeah, go to the American Slavery Project, Black Women and the Ballad. It's still online. You can watch it for free until the elections. So these are only a few things that I've been working on. I wish, yeah, I wish I could do more. So, Saviana, for months at the Segalier, the first four months, every day of the week, from Monday to Friday, we talked to artists that was about corona and the situation. We also appeal now, we open it up a bit to curators, thinkers, but also to the political, the idea of theater and the politic, political, not politics, but the political. You worked as a journalist, also you said these themes of significance to you. Do you see yourself as a political artist, our activist? And if so, how do you define that? Yeah, thank you for this question. Yes, I do see myself as a political writer and an artist, artist, not activist. As you know, unfortunately, the term activist has still a negative connotation in Romania because of the totalitarian system. So each time I say that in Romania, they go like, oh, what? So I'm trying to be clear that what I try to do is, yes, to use the power of theater and the power of playwriting to tackle and interrogate teams that are relevant for our times, teams that need to be interrogated and challenged and the truth that needs to be spoken to the power of the moment. I mean, ever since my first dramatic poem, The Outcast, I have written plays about outcasts, about people that are marginalized, that are misunderstood, that are outsiders, people who would like to belong and they can't fully do that because the society doesn't allow them to do so. So I do feel that I am a political writer in the sense that I really try to bring the voices of outsiders to the main stages. And I really try to bring these perspectives that challenge the power dynamics of the moment. So I am interested in power dynamics and exploring the power relationships between individuals and between countries. So I feel that ever since I arrived to New York, I started to understand better the bigger picture, the bigger global picture. So I consider myself a global artist as well. I am trying to address these issues of power between humans and between and among countries. And yeah, just interrogate these issues and speak truth to power. In a way that has a little bit of humor because we know what George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde said, if you are to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh, otherwise they kill you. So I always try to bring a little bit of humor. Maybe because the old Romanian saying, one eye cries, one eye laughs. So I come from this tradition of things that can be done at the same time. You can address important issues and be political, but also laugh at certain things. So that ambiguity I'm trying to bring a little bit on to American stages because I do think we need to address these major issues and political issues, but I also think that we need to be able to be comfortable with the multiplicity of voices and meanings, be comfortable with non-binary thinking, non-binaries, multiplicity of roots and belonging. I love this concept of a professor at Columbia University, Vishakadis Desai. Yes, this multiplicity of identities needs to be celebrated, not uttered. So I think that that's my somehow core message that I'm trying to bring through my place while also creating engaging characters and powerful stories. I also think I bring a poetic realism, stylized realism, not necessarily the mainstream realism, psychological realism that the American stages might be used to. So yes, it's hard on many levels to bring these different voices and storytelling approaches to American stages. That's why we do need this revolution. We do need to challenge the mainstream aesthetics as well in all these terms. I mean, which is interesting, the remedy protocol, for example, says we are architects, but we're also journalists, and they say we also make theater. And I don't think they're just joking in a funny way, but they see them as their work, as research. We're gonna have a series coming up also, as Carol Martin on the theater of the real that became also in the pandemic, I think a new meaning in a way where research and putting the real whatever it is, but theater always has investigated what is real, what's reality, what's not, what's not on mind. So it's all these things where we see the apple and the image of the apple in our mind and the image of the image of the image. How do you approach your work then? Do you do interviews the way you produce it? Is that formally, do you sit like the player you sit at home, you type, you write, you listen to talks or you go out, you interview, read articles that you invite people. How do you produce your work for these new forms? What can we learn from the way you do it? Thank you. Well, I have different approaches because first of all, studying both performance studies and dramatic writing at NYU, I got different approaches to being a writer. From performance studies and generally from experimental theater and environmental theater and downtown theater, I learned to work more collaboratively. Yes, to do documentary theater or site specific projects or develop projects with the company of actors. But then when I started dramatic writing, I learned to be more rigorous as a playwright and working with the Lark Play Development Center to develop all my new plays. Actually, I learned about the playwright as the center of the room and with a team that works around the playwright's voice to make that play better and better. So I think I've been using these different approaches in my work. I realized that the playwright's voice approach can bring you closer to mainstream theater. I mean, off-Broadway plays, Broadway plays are generally focused on the playwright's voice. It's not so much about ensembles or collaborative work. Yeah, as the downtown theater might arguably be. And I'm simplifying these things. So people, you know, there is a nuanced discussion to be had and of course, the books like Carol Martin's and Richard Schechner's and many other books to speak better than me about ensemble theater and the theater of the real and the downtown theater. But at this point, I feel closer to the idea of being a playwright to have having the concept, writing, doing my own research, writing a first draft or just a few scenes and then hearing them all out with actors. And based on the questions and the input that I have from the actors, I go further. I work with the director and other actors or the same actors, you know, they are committed to the work, to write a new draft of the play, to do a stage reading, to maybe do a workshop. So this is pretty much the way in which large play development center or New York theater workshop or ensemble studio theater EST work to bring new plays to life through a new play development process that is centered on the voice of the playwright. And I like that because yeah, I feel that in Romania I didn't have much of a chance to, you know, just to be a playwright that drives the process. While here in New York, especially I did get the chance to the lark, to have my voice heard as a playwright and develop New York. For instance, I like this process of being commissioned by a company to write a new play. Most recently, the Civic Ensemble, a very interesting company focused on social, you know, theater for social change and political theater commissioned me to write a play for them. And the producer got three Siemens who's a wonderful actor and producer and director, asked me to write whatever I wanted. He really liked that monologue about the undocumented worker. So I started with that monologue and wrote a play called Be Trapped Inside a Window, which actually discusses three women of different ethnicities. One is white, she has a black daughter. So it's very interesting to explore that dynamic. And the other one is the housekeeper, the domestic worker of their neighbors. So it interrogates these relationships, you know, not just between ethnicities, but between people engaged in different activities and how they relate to each other. How can people be really seen? Do we really see our neighbors? Do we really see the person next door? And I'm really, you know, concerned with these kind of issues and I am trying to explore them in my plays. And Be Trapped Inside a Window had a few stage readings and we are hoping for a production soon. It's been directed by the wonderful Vernice Miller, who's a great actress and director as well. So this is the most recent project that I'm working on and I enjoy the process very much. So again, I wrote the first draft. I heard it with actors. I wrote a few new drafts. I gave them to the producer. They organized a workshop of a week to develop the text further. We had a drama tour, Walter Sean. So I like this work of collaborating with a team but I also like at this point to, you know, write my own plays, to write my first draft and drive a little bit the process of new play development. So in the way you agree, Bonnie Moranka talks about that. She feels perhaps we live in a time of writing, of golden writing, where it again becomes at the center, there's the misunderstanding of post-traumatic theater that writing wasn't, you know, a center anymore. I think Hans-Tieslemann always would say that writing is significant as light and as movement, also light and movement. And stage direction is as significant as writing. So we have to pay attention. That is actually what made new work, contemporary or post-traumatic work. So interesting and exciting, but writing of Yellenek or Polish or others or a Handke, who we favor so much. It always has been a part of it. And there was a feeling that also in a lot of downtown theater, but perhaps also in the off-Broadway scene, it was so psychologically realistic and repetitive, not full of surprises. And that perhaps now there is a resurgence that playwriting is again, or writing itself, perhaps novel, it's also poetry, you know, is perhaps a stronger form and to capture and the historical significance at the moment, we are into to capture traces of it. Do you feel that this is the case that Romania also is a director-driven theater, like most of Berlin's or European theater is, not in London, but do you feel writing and words are at the center, should be at the center of trying to create meaning of the time we're in theater and performance? Well, you know, things have changed for me many times in terms of how I understand the theater and the performance generally. Strangely enough, I think I was more post-dramatic when I started in Romania with my poetic texts, non-narrative, non-realistic characters, absurdist, a poetic, long monologues, but starting at NYU in dramatic writing, I became more, I would say dramatic, not post-dramatic. I went a little bit back into the dramatic work with a story, fleshed out characters, dramatic arc, dramatic intention, all those things. I cannot fully say that I'm still, and I could ever be a fully traditional writer in that sense. So my plays will always have elements that are non-narrative, that are post-traumatic, that are post-modern, that are non-linear, that are poetic or stylized. I always worked with other media as well with dancers and choreographers. I wrote a text for Dan Safer's Witness Relocation. So I feel that I've always collaborated with visual artists very well. I like all these things. So for me as an artist, as an interdisciplinary artist, to a certain extent, all these forms of creating art make sense and I embrace them. However, the closest to my heart is indeed writing and having the words at the center of what I have to express. I'm, and I do that in my plays. I also write fiction. I'm working on a novel. I still write poetry. I'm writing a memoir. So while I always like to also do some works that engage with the audiences in a more interdisciplinary way, visual or multimedia, I do go back to writing. And I hope to find, I always hope to find collaborators in which, with whom I can really collaborate well and they can bring their own expertise as visual artists or directors or choreographers. But at the end of the day, I feel that, oh, I shouldn't say that, but I will say it. I feel that I just want to be a writer at the end of the day. A writer that does engage with visual elements and multimedia and interdisciplinarity, but I do want to be a writer. And for instance, speaking about theater during the pandemic, I just wrote a short monologue of a fortune teller, Flora Wisdom, for a company called Nomad Theatrical of run by Grant Neal and Leanne Hutchinson. Grant Neal is an actor who I wrote to Polanski Polanski for. One men show that we toured over to Romania and in other countries at the Hungarian State Theater in Kluge. And he was also in Porgy and Bess, an actor as the detective at the Metropolitan Opera. So I am saying this is that I feel that now people intersect more than ever in terms of downtown artists, interdisciplinary artists, experimental artists and mainstream artists. So I feel that now there is an opportunity with this revolution to stop thinking in these terms and in terms of mainstream Broadway, of Broadway downtown and try to embrace these multiple possibilities of what we can bring on stages. So do I want to work on Broadway? You bet I do. I hope actually Broadway producers would come to me and would be interested to develop one of my plays or yes, some musical. At this point of my life, I feel the need to have the freedom of expression in a full way. I worked hard for it. I struggled for so long. I do want to be able to bring my voice with all the nuances and the knowledge that I embraced and I gathered during the years. So yes, I guess at this point I like to be working as a writer. I like to be commissioned to write plays for Broadway or Broadway. I like to write for TV. Many of my playwrights, friends write for TV and I love TV as well. So I would totally embrace the chance to be part of a writer's room or develop a new show for TV. I mean, we are here on Zoom. It's time for us artists. I feel, at least I feel so, to work in different media and embrace the creativity that we can bring in different media. To also live the multiple identities who you feel you have to reflect on stage. So they have to reflect on life. It's true in a way when you said that the Broadway and Off-Pro and Down-Town are equal options. And right now, I guess for the first time they all share the same experience. They're all closed down, whether you're Broadway or Off-Arm. And it doesn't used to be. If you had the money, you could. Now you can't. And there's something interesting in that and to see who does work now, who produces, you know, we're gonna have. Handan out from LaGuardia College, he produces online festival, the festivals you talk about, but we do not see it from a billion dollar industry of Broadway to engage, to do mass, to have food cushions, support artists. Even the Met, if I understand why it hasn't paid the artists, the opera since March. And they're not gonna open up for you. Because financially, it doesn't make sense why aren't they singing in the parks, you know? And I'm sure the people in the offices are all paid. So what's going on here if it's about creating work and art for the people of New York City? But I also wanted to ask you and good to see an update from you, what's on your mind, but you're thinking what you're working on, but how are you as a person? How is Savyana experiencing this time? How do you feel? Well, yeah, thank you for this question. You know, what can I say? You know, I sacrificed so much as a person to just be able to do my work, my creative work. That's why in a way for me, these things are, you know, equivalent. My career, what I do for my art and my well-being as a person. When I don't work on a project, on an artistic project, when I don't write something with the idea that with a sort of clear goal that it will have a reading or a production, I don't feel myself. I get literally sick, you know? I really enjoy working with directors like Tamila Woodard. We developed so many great projects together and she was on your show as well, on your talks. With Tamila, we developed a project called enslaved about sex and human traffic. I love to really be working and collaborating with artists. So it's very hard for me at this time because, you know, I live by myself. I'm trying to do my best to teach my classes as well and support my students. But, you know, as a person, as an artist, what do I have for me? What I have for me at this point in my life is just working on the projects that I love and seeing them on stage or at least on screen. So, yeah, it's hard for me to say how am I doing as a person because I invested so much in this life, in my writing, in my artistic work, in my career, in starting all over again and being resilient and in this continuous struggle of, you know, having my voice heard as an artist, as a writer, that I cannot even make, you know, the distinction between me as a person and Saviana as an artist. So maybe, you know, I can talk more about me as a person where we're gonna meet over, I don't know, a glass of wine in New York when the restaurants are open and the theaters are open and we can go see a show and then talk about that show, you know, nice restaurant. So, you know, I like this kind of stuff. That's why I love New York and that's why I love and I still love that beautiful artistic spirit and community of New York because over there, yes, you feel that you are present. You are a part of the tapestry of that wonderful city of people of different colors and races and ethnicities and genders. And that multiplicity I was talking about, I think it's best represented by New York for me and I know this is such a silly, you know, love letter for New York, but it is how I feel and I hope we can be back soon into, you know, that wonderful spirit of artists in New York. However, if that's not possible too soon, I hope we can do more, you know, theater and art and film and TV and do things on the screen and in any other form that we can do our art because there will always be a need for storytelling, there will always be a need for art and we artists have always found different ways to tell our stories. I mean, look what I have here, I have a, it's a queer, I mean, you know, writers had to write in different ways in different media, so we're just gonna survive and tell our stories in any new possible ways. Yeah, yeah, and the way we write, you know, I think Goethe who was right was the quill and the post-carriage on his way to Italy, that's what he did, you know, it was jumping or first writers using typewriters, you know, which was an offense in the very beginning to get a tip type written note from friend or from an embassy and then computers and then handwriting and so yeah, so there, and it influences us very deeply. Kittler, the great German linguist said, you know, big revolutions actually changes in artistic expression and capturing the importance of historical moments through the arts actually happened when these new mediums came up, you know, when Bob Dylan was playing all of a sudden electric guitar and it was people were furious now, everybody does it or when the first computers were used, the first typewriters, when the poets heard a recording of their own voice through Edison, the first of the shark they experienced or when the first story, this little story all of a sudden we're on a screen, like the Blue Angel by Heinrich Mann, a small novella all of a sudden went around the world and something completely changed and I think this is a time where we do also live and something is changing, something has changed and we have to find a way to understand it better than artists are the ones who really are part of it, anticipating it and also making us comfortable with what's coming and I do hope that what is coming is better as it is now and things, as you also said, have to change, they have to be better ways if art is there for the people, for everybody in New York, in New York City, all five boroughs we need to find new ways, we are trying to create a new festival also in 2022 engaging all five neighbors but also all New York presenting organizations and New York International Festival of the Arts where we hope artists from the Segal Talks will all participate and be part of it and also something radically different like the Berlin Festspieler, it was Thomas O'Brander who had a project now that's what's called Unplugged where there was no electricity used, significant artists no electricity used, no lights, no air conditioning and they said no flights, you know and so they, how does it, how would that look like and it's like in many, many other things and we are coming close also to the end and really, really thank you for sharing this moment in your life and your experience and to talk about your work what inspires you, what artists are you look out to in theater but also what do you read, what are you listening to what keeps your motor warm or running? Well, it's very inspiring for me to read the novels actually, I'm a big fan of Toni Morrison and yesterday the Cornell University organized a very impressive marathon of reading the whole novel, The Bluest Eye I love that novel, so it was amazing to have these different black artists and scholars read the entire novel I love that her writing, I love the language I love, yeah, I love everything about the type of writing that's very rich and poetic In terms of theater, I love many playwrights and directors and many people I had a chance to work with and I love Lynn Nottage as a playwright for instance but there are so many that I'm sure that if I start saying a few names I'm going to miss others so what can I say, I also love directors that are creative I love Taylor Mac and they're flamboyant and unique and multi-dimensional creativity what can I say, I love Rajiv Joseph who was my classmate at NYU, I love his work as well there are many, many people whose work I love and I'm just proud to be working with them in other projects, so for me I tried to be with other inspiring artists, so you know any chance I get to work with others is a pleasure, a blessing and an honor And what are you listening to, what are you reading? Yeah, well, I'm not listening so much music at this time because it's such a busy time with teaching and I have to prepare for my classes so I still have to read lots of the re-read the plays that I teach, the scholarly work that I teach so I'm very much immersed in reading the works that I need to teach in my classes I also, again, the spirit of our time I raise talk and the conspiracy of silence I read a lot about anti-racism about how can we talk about race I'm trying to be as present as I can and understand as well as I can the spirit of the moment here in the US and it's not easy to leave this in between us of cultures because there are certain values and certain things that have relevance in Romania and other things that have relevance here in the US some things have relevance in New York others in the regional theater so I'm trying to constantly navigate this intersection of perspectives and cultures and find my little place and center somehow as an artist Yeah, and to have that, you know you have that photo of New York City behind you but through the curtain we see the landscape of Ithaca and maybe some Romanian painting of flowers, maybe I don't know, maybe I might imagine it so really you carry all these worlds with you on your shoulders, in your handbags, in your toolbox and you invite audience to share your experience and to celebrate it and to maybe even ask bigger and better question and I think it is important for all of us also to really listen to Saviana Cristina Mondriano who wrote I think a history of the Romanian theater and she said why it was important to listen to she said they are victims of totalitarian regimes people in the post-communist countries turned overnight into heavy users of kind of a Western consumption society and again they felt they are victims so one train was replaced with another but they also were on the passive side the victim side of the abuse side and you go through these two systems on both and your observations as a traveler, as a wanderer as a nomad between the two worlds it is really of significance and your research what should we present as civil ceremonies you know something that I think Kroncia talks about what do we place the pump of the kings and the religious ceremonies and all that we have to replace it with something new and it is the art but what is it that we really offer what really is it that carries meaning makes a difference helps us to understand where we are and I think your work is a real research towards that contribution well actually Cristina Mondriano who's an old friend of mine she wrote for the same newspaper the newspaper yeah actually after I left that newspaper so you know I had to leave Romania she was one that took my job basically so we are old friends and she's the one who commissioned the revolution project for the international theater platform so we go way back and we'd be working very well together I love Cristina and she's for me an old friend and a great collaborator yeah yeah that is important you know she wrote about that we're mini director of Pintile who was about to set himself on fire he said if you censor my play I'm going to burn myself you know I mean there's serious work that has been not only Shaban so many Chiulei and so many others it's a great great history that comes out and we don't know as much here in the United States but it's a significant contribution UNESCO of course everybody has heard and but it is a significant force in the history of theater and you are part of it yeah but as you know I mean maybe the most arguably the most well known Romanian artists in the U.S. are men artists, male artists you know wonderful directors like Andrei Shaban of course Chiulei and Pintile and Belgrade and the wonderful writers like poets and fiction writers like Andrei Kodrescu but you know I wish that we women writers have a little bit more of a voice here and yeah I'm trying to bring a little bit of maybe at Giannino Nario here and Mikaela Dragan you know and and others and also you so we are trying to make our contribution you know to to extend our view of it and this is also one of the ideas you know of the CETO talk so yeah I love Mikaela Dragan actually I talked with her a lot when I was in Romania she created a great group of Roma artists and I have Roma roots on my father's side we never really talked enough about that in my family so that's why I don't talk enough about that because I feel that you know I wasn't raised in a Roma community but Mikaela she's the real thing I love her as an actor, as a writer and her company Gubri-Plan is wonderful she performed at the CETO center what beautiful work her interviews so yeah so I thank you thank you thank you and we're coming to the end of this week and we're coming up next week also a big lineup Milo Rao is going to come back and talk about his book Why Theatre each he did was Katja de Garetin and Karaman and others so he really wanted to come back and also tell us about this significant I think also collection of ideas of the time we are in now Florian Maltzaker the German curator will talk about his ideas of games for society like the theater perhaps of games or instructions and engaging audience of what we will do and then we have Handan Osbilgin who puts together an online festival especially for communities, immigrant communities communities of people of color and she has done that for a very long time and it's also coming up so she will talk also about her experience as a Turkish woman you know to to work in the arts and her divided loyalties in a way in her experiences so I say I really thank you thank you I hope it was as inspiring for you as it was for us and good luck with your work and I admire the discipline you have that you keep on writing and working and yeah I can only imagine how hard it is especially also for someone like you to be in the time of corona to be in your place and that world of the sudden is reduced to screen like no when you click on leave it's over right and we adjust again with us there's no drink after no coffee no noises of buddies in rooms and hellos and outside so it's a very hard time for everybody in the arts and but nothing lasts forever not the good but also not the bad and there will be different but we have to be ready we have to prepare now and we have to implement the real change so thank you thank you all for listening this is all what Savyana that is for you actually she might look like she wants to talk to me but actually she really does it because of the listeners we have here and what you think and that it hopefully you know create something real that thoughts travel and have an impact so please do consider very carefully all what she said and what she's thinking about and what she is working on and thanks to Hal Rowdy again for hosting us the VJ and Andy from the Cedars Center to make this happen so I'm gonna have a good weekend and hope you all will join us next week stay safe stay tuned and all my best bye bye thank you so much Frank it was a pleasure to talk with you and hopefully yes with the audiences all our