 Welcome everybody back here on Siegel Talks at the Martinie Siegel Theatre, the Graduate Center CUNY in the middle of New York City and Midtown Manhattan. And it's another week on planet Earth. It's a tumultuous week in America and the world is watching. What has happened here? There was a great presidential election, at least how we see it. And there's a lot of turmoil around it and it is actually a time place will be written about great place. I think films will be done and we are right in the middle of it. And where we do ask what are our values? What is theater about? What is art about? Also, what is politics about? What is democracy about? All these things that are invisible, they don't exist in the real world. They are ideas, they are part of an imagination. But still, this is what is important to our lives, our work and also for a nation. This is what nations go to war for. And now we are in a moment that is dramatic and play antiquity. Of course, this has been mentioned so often in our torch like the Galileo from Brecht is, you know, what do you do? What is law? What is a human law? What is above it? How do you follow a leader? When do you resist and follow your own guidance? So a lot to talk about and a lot to do. We have talked since March with theater artists from around the world and we feel very strongly that we have to listen to them. They have something to say instead of politicians or give speeches or people who write articles or sculptures or make sculptures. Theater artists create work that we see on stage. It's a way of thinking, a way of doing. It's a way of making a statement and perhaps we have not listened enough. They have warned us about the climate to change for a very long time, about a corruption, about moral issues, social issues and but also reminded us of the beauty of life. And if we miss anything, it's the beauty of theater performances and getting together as a group, as a community and watch something and then talk about it, which is a big, big function of it. Today we have something new. We have something significant. I think we are going to focus on the theater of the real somehow strongly connect also to the idea of documentary theater. And with me is Carol Martin today as a co-host also. It's the first day. So we have a theme for this week. We will have a second week in the future about this and where we will talk about theater. But a theme in this fall also is a little bit theater performance and the political after we focused on voices from artists where we feel who have been on the right side of justice on the complex struggle for freedom, liberty and free speech over centuries. And I think also now they are on the right side. We have guests with us. Carol selected artist she feels and we both feel our significance in the field of importance. Their work serves as a model. It puzzle pieces to create an overview on that field. And with us is the great hotel hotel modern. We would say a hotel modern or I don't know how we would say it exactly in that way. We will hear it and the Pauline Kalker Herman Halle Arlene Honbech with us today. And they will talk a little bit about who they are and but I would like to welcome Carol Martin who's a professor of drama at the NYU Tisch School. She's a professor of the arts and also for Abu Dhabi and her books include theater of the real and dramaturgy of the real and of the real and the role on the world stage in her articles have been in the contributions essays tends to play in books in many, many language. And I think over the last decades, her field and she kind of supported, discovered, reinforced the theater of the real. Perhaps it's a most significant contribution also coming out in a in a support of development in contemporary theater that we all have to take serious have to take note. And it is of meaning and of support of importance. She of course is a guest editor of a TDR where her work and has been featured so so many times and she has been invited of course in university around the world. And it's been a keynote speaker and in many, many, many, many fields of theater respected highly respected as an academic but also as a within the state of community. So Carol, welcome to being here with us and and give us a little a little overview over the field and tell us a little bit what is theater of the real why should we pay attention then we go to our artists. Okay, great. So, first of all, hello everyone, and thank you, Frank for inviting me to co host and I'm very excited and I'm so happy that hotel modern is our first guest. I, I write about them in my book theater the real. I saw their production of camp at St. Anne's warehouse in 2010 and I was certainly taken with what they were doing on so many levels. But before I'm going to give them a larger introduction, but I'm just saying very few things about theater the real. So, you know, at the time when I began thinking about the subject there was a lot of work. That was attempting to create interventions and justice to portray specific events from certain vantage points to claim that this is tribunal theater for a way of bringing justice outside of the law. In the autobiographical theater, there was restored village performances that claimed fealty to original events. So I thought documentary which we tended to use in the US more verbatim used more frequently in the UK. So I looked at all of it and, and saw a relationship. And in idea, in originary ideas, but I decided to call it theater the real as an umbrella term that incorporates incorporates many different approaches and many different understandings many artistic methods in somehow representing interacting with real events. So that that was the unifying idea of theater the real, you know, you can never, one should never dictate what people should call their own work. So all of these terms proliferate documentary verbatim nonfiction theater of witness tribunal theater and they're, they're all fine. I think we're a little bit more clarity, because each kind of approach does something slightly different or perhaps has slightly different methodology but Soviet theater the real. So I want to say a few words about hotel modern to introduce them and then we'll let you take it away. So the company was founded in 1997. And they put on modern has done works about history. I think the most recent one is our empire. And that's about the early history of the Netherlands and Indonesia and a vast scale model of the Indonesian archipelago fills the stage. There was early on the great war about World War two. Oh, sorry, yes. Sorry, over one thing. No, no, it's okay. Yeah, happy to be corrected their camp, which I write about in theater the real it's a careful miniaturization of the physical environment Auschwitz Birkenau. And at the time of writing my book I said that camp gives us the impression that what went on in Auschwitz Birkenau can be reconstructed and comprehended, and even be held in one's hands, that it is an absolute memory the memory of the Holocaust in this place that can be known and repeated. All of those works, I believe had sound skimps I'm not sure about empire, but they don't have verbal texts. So this is a unique unique feature of hotel modern work. There's, we have to correct you about that we will do that later on. Okay, great. This is Pansicle Works seaplane mothership is an apocalyptic work featuring old books short films scenes from after the bomb pop art science fiction, nose and poets, it sounds fascinating I'd love to watch it. Pansicle Works about quote unquote, the fascinating play that calls itself humanity, and hotel modern uses 350 dry shrimp to play the roles of people. And there's Rococo hotel moderns declaration of love to fantasy and imagination. It's about sex and curiosity, and what happens when lust and curiosity are given free reign so I'm hoping you'll talk to us about what does happen indeed. So all the work uses scale models that take up entire stage spaces, when puppets are used as opposed to shrimp, they are like a possibly two and a half inches high is that right like a finger length. So the the artisanship that goes into creating this work is enormous. At the same time, there are and I think this is. So one of, you know, hotel moderns work comes up against theater the real comes against puppetry, it comes up against, you know, very innovative scenographic design and has a unique dramaturgy, but one of the things I personally love is that the human members, so that is the company members of three company members are always, always present their manipulation of the puppets invisible ways that help us make us think about the nature of human agency in historical events in Pansicle stories and even biblical So, I should just want to mention the hotel modern has one of the most fabulous websites of any theater company ever on the planet. And maybe somebody put that in the chat maybe I will in a moment, but there's, you know, in my own in my own personal viewing of miniature things. I just wanted to say that I grew up with Colleen Moore's fairy castle. Which is is a is a dollhouse. It's a huge dollhouse, but it's in the museum of science and industry in Chicago. And it was built around 1920s by Colleen Moore who was a silent film actor so she had excess money. It was, it has things like a willow tree that really weeps and books authored by things authors and a staircase where the fairy queen can load up the circular staircase. So, and more recently, but also coming out of Chicago, there is the nutshell studies of unexplained death, which were created by Francis Leslie and these are explicitly detailed miniature crime series that were created to train homicide investigators in how to look for clues to a crime. And now they reside in Harvard but they're all over they're all online so one can look at them. So, you know the whole idea of why miniaturization. So, I just wanted to mention one more work. I think hotel modern did this incredible did go scenes 1818 opera. It's a in a Gito Moses in Egypt, and which I watched last night for the first time. And it seems like the your work has always been spectacular in that it invites us very explicitly into a certain kind of view. And the dramaturgy seems built upon notions of spectacular, but with Moses in Egypt. It takes them even grander scale because they're the opera singers on stage as well. So, so I just love to hear you begin to talk about your work and ask questions as we go along. I don't know if it was clear that that we film the models and we film the puppets so yes. So what the audience see is us filming the puppets and the models on stage. And it is projected from the big screen and together with the soundscape the composer on stage makes the sounds the life soundscape. So that comes together and so it's us making the film and the audience see us doing it at the same time so and seeing the result. Yeah, say a few words about who you are. It's about, you know, maybe Herman Polin and then Alain and how do you fit in the company and then we come to to how you got all that started. So, first of all, again, welcome and thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having us. Okay, so my name is Pauline Kalkar. I'm an actress and theater maker and yeah actually Arlena, who was also an actress, you say who you are Arlena. Oh yeah, I'm also an actress. And I'm Arlena Horneberg and yeah, Pauline and I we've known each other for a very long time. Tell me your story. We say who we are. I'm a visual artist. I was trained as a visual artist and now I turned into kind of theater maker together with Pauline and Arlena. So, that's amazing. Well, Arlena, you go on then. Yeah, that I was wanted to tell that Polin and I, we've known each other for a very long time. We started acting when we were very young and we joined the lessons together and after that we did theater school and in R&M. And after school we wanted to have a company. So, but we wanted to mix different art forms. And so we we started with making a musical performance and then we met Herman. Yeah, because then Herman he was he was my boyfriend at the time when Arlena and me founded Hotel Moderne and Herman he as a visual artist. He made models for city planners and architects and he once helped him when he created a huge model of Rotterdam and the environment was a model. I don't know about inches and feet, but it was a well, like the size of half a football field. 100 feet long, I think and 40 feet wide, something like that. 15 meters by 35 meters. I don't know, but it's it's like huge. You made a model like that. I found very theatrical and then I got the idea of inviting Herman in Hotel Moderne and working together and putting models on stage. And this was in 1998. And so then from then on, we work with models on stage. And yeah, the first show we created was was about a city and it was without cameras. We had we just had the idea we're gonna okay we're gonna bring a model on stage what can what can models do. And the first idea was okay models can you make a city with models so we made a huge city with so yeah with cardboard boxes. Yeah, it was it was the most I made where all the buildings are like this and then we had a whole stage to fill. So I said yeah to be city real big things are used to cardboard boxes that refrigerators will be packed in nowadays they're in plastic but then they were in cardboard so big cardboard boxes stacked upon each other skyscrapers and buildings, and then we started to to figure out what we could do on theater with that and how it could get live into it. And so, but then then then the models I always used strange things household materials and glasses and brooms and everything that I could use and their originated idea of using later in in in in in the show, for instance, we, everyone's talking about in the great war, how partially becomes trees you put partially put the camera on it you put a little rabbit in front, and everyone sees trees. And I found that out in the models if you use, for instance, few pieces of wood, a put one big pointed piece in the middle, and some some something green around it everyone sees a village with church steeple in the middle. And it's doesn't look at all like it but you have to trigger the imagination. And we tried to do that in theater so we with the boxes so all kinds of materials we moved around in it. And then. So for instance, yes, we had little breads being the cars. And we moved them. Yeah, yeah, in between the cardboard boxes and so the breads were traffic hundreds of them, and then we had big breads being buses and then these French breads being airplanes and so it was really we find all kind of ways of putting Hermann's visual language on stage and actually it was also theater of the real because it was like a real city with real city elements. There was we had, for instance, we had a banana that was a character and that jumped of a building he suicide. And it was happy but also the perfume bottles that were having a party on the roof of a skyscraper and beer cans they were hooligans like, oh, so it was falling. And there was a character inside. And from then on so that was without cameras and then it was it was nice at that moment at that time. Rotterdam is Rotterdam is now booming in a way and everyone discovered it and it's it's Rotterdam is hip and you go there. But in those days it was the city was not so popular yet cities have become more. Yeah, and we were trying and we were trying to to to to really excited about the city and we are making a portrait of Rotterdam city where we're in with all these, all these things that. Yeah, so then Herman he worked. He bought a camera at that time it was not so easy to buy cameras now everybody has a camera in his or her phone but in 1998 that was different. So that was the first time when cameras got affordable and Herman bought a camera and in his in a studio he started to making models in front of the camera. So then you could see the model and landscape happening or. He created he created the models in front of the camera so you could see his head making making the scenery, the lens and then and then he got the idea of making a show with that technique. And then he got in his head. He wanted to do the first world war, because war is very. Why, maybe it's good for you to tell why you want to make something about war. Yeah, well, the first idea wasn't it wasn't that I wanted to make something about war I had, I had, we had, we found out that it was nice to make landscapes in front of a camera and see hands doing that and then maybe that's we should do it on stage we should and I had had there's the landscapes and the first idea was. I had a vision of a little table with earth and on a big stage and a big orchestra making lots of music and then. And then, and then, and people saw these hands making landscape with music that was that was all that it was a vision, but then, of course, you need, you need, you need a story, you need to drama, and I think about what can happen in a landscape. So, walking around, I didn't know I didn't know, suddenly in my head pop the image of the image of the landscapes of the first world war these black and white pictures of destroyed landscapes with puddles of mud and an old tank and broken trees just that could that and I could be beautiful to make and then stop let's make them maybe maybe should do that war. That's so simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I may be also interested to tell why you were in. Yeah, because it's war is big thing in our work. So and that has a reason. So maybe you tell your yes. Well, it was it also triggered because the desolation of the landscape, but it's also, of course, I was raised by parents who were in the Second World War, and my father was in in Indonesia at the time he was born there. He was 18 the war broke out and he had to go in the army and shoot yesterday's planes and then he was in a prison of war camp. And I was love those stories as a kid. I thought they were fascinating and exciting and, of course, as a little boy, and then later when I had to go in the army in 1977. There was in Holland there. I had to be had to have to go everyone every boy had to have to go in the army then. And I was I was a bugle player in the army so I had in Amsterdam so I had an easy job, but I also two or three times I had to shoot we had shooting practice and they had to shoot the machine gun and until that moment I would thought it was the 70s that all my friends were pacifist and so I so was I and guns were for crazy people there were for different bad people guns were bad and people like guns were bad. And after the day of machine gun shooting I realized to my horror that I enjoyed it really it really it was so exciting to shoot the machine gun really the sound and the, the, the noise and the power of it and then oh my God, I'm there's something with me and I was really shocked by that and then but I also understood something about this is why all these guys these boys running around the world that guns that's the reason the war they they all go into war it's I understood something about it. And then I asked then I started wondering what was it like for my father to shoot machine guns and airplanes but he could be shot too and it wasn't all fun and then that stated me that fascination for what it was like. I also realized I wasn't in peacetime in war but there was a cold war and sergeants were always talking of the Russians who are coming and crazy talk. But then every spare bit. You tried out your machine gun on a helmet. Yeah, my own helmet. Yes. Yeah, but also part of that story that I so Yeah, so you guys in a way you know the miniature worlds video So you created invented a form of showing stories or sharing your thoughts going back to Carol's introduction. And there's kind of a history as being part of the real and the new forms how to produce it. What's your reaction what you hear what she said about you guys and I think after this was what we were coming. We haven't chose the first world war, which was not the war that that his father fought in, but it was a war, which in which we could tell the story with with models. And then we found out because this show became a very powerful, evoking performance. We had huge success we found out that with models, we could we could recreate and we could we could recreate battlefields. We could really be there and with the with the little cameras we had we could look through the eyes of the soldiers that fought in the trenches. Life, because there are of course many films of the first world war war films. And their their theater pieces. But we what we do live animation film. It recreates it has the best of theater and the best of film at the same time and also the best of puppetry. And I think we are in way by accident because we made models and theater and we have these teams in our lives. And what happened and after the second world war. I got the idea of the first world war, I wanted, I wanted to make a show about the second about about the Holocaust as as my, my grandfather and, and the parents of my grandfather were killed in in Auschwitz and in so be more. And I thought this this method is so great to great. Yeah, it brings it back to you. Yes, so physical physical theater is physical and and our models bring bring all landscapes, cityscapes landscapes. And it brings physical physical in in the theater and we can we can witness. We can witness the world and we can also together with this with the sound so which is very sensitive very with your eyes with your ears, etc. So it's, you are really there. And so then we wanted to create camp, which also is documentary, and therefore it was, it was really important for us to be documentary in that way, and also with the first world war actually. Yes, we wanted to recreate that the camp or actually it's not exactly Auschwitz, you can now it's based on, on, it's based on some features but it's not exactly because the skill would be much bigger. So it is a kind of Auschwitz Birkenau but not exactly what it was but the things the events that happened there. They are, they happened. The re-enaction is it gives the opportunity to the audience to to witness what happens to be there physically. But of course not feel the pain, or, you know, you, I would never recommend anyone to be witness of that physically or to be in a camp that nobody once said it's traumatizing, but using puppets. It is not traumatizing, but it is opening your mind, the eye in your mind, allow the images and allow the events to come in and to take them in and to reflect on them. So I think that's what our art form. In thus far is moving from these from Herman's cityscapes, which are fascinating and theatrical to look at to to within these large escapes, creating human drums in enabling both the macro view of let's say the war field. And with the puppets and the camera on the puppets, and the live feed animation at the same time, being able to zone in on how the individual soldier puppets are moving experiencing this war. So it's and I think the same thing is in camp. And it's an incredible micro and macro view simultaneously. But how do you get to, to which scenes in the drama that you want to portray. I mean, because you have to make, and then you have to dramaturgically, you know, put them back to back. What's that process like. Well, the process, we always do a lot of research for our performances for like with first world war we, yeah we read a lot of books because they're on our survivors so we read a lot of books a lot of letters. And so we had this big ball of material. And with camp we, we talked a lot to survivors and heard their stories and read a lot. And then for with camp for us it was, we wanted to show the machinery of the camp. So we wanted to show a day and a night in the camp. And it was about like the heart beating of the train that comes in, people getting out. So the audience sees what have what people will lead to, and eventually the guest chambers where that they were killed. So for us, hey, it was very, the first thing we've thought, yeah, we guest chamber must be, we have must have seen with guest chamber and the train coming in. So that were, and then we heard stories of the survivors and some, they were very like, we have to put them in, for example, like a man told that they had to witness fellow prisoners being hanged and that was so, yeah, something so terrible and so cold and so, yeah, we had to put that in. So and, yeah, but also important for, for this is we, we, like I said, we have a lot of research, we have a lot of wishes we want to put in the show. Oh, that's a possibility. That's a possibility. And then always there comes a moment that we try it with puppets and the camera. And that's, that's, that's a decisive moment because there's a lot possible. A lot of things are possible with cameras and but a lot of things are not. And you can only find out by trying so a lot of things be throw away because it's not possible to do with a camera and then doing it, it changes because other things are possible and it's a lot of depends on the what the puppets can do and for example, like, like within camp, we tried to retry dialogue. First, we tried, like in the first World War performance, we have these texts of the soldiers so you hear Pauline and I we do the voiceovers and that there are letters from soldiers. You hear so you, we have text in that, but with in camp, we tried to do dialogue but it didn't work that the puppets, it wasn't real, it's, yeah, it didn't have the power. So we decided to skip text to only hear the sounds and it made it even Yeah, it made it more stronger to look at. What do you think about putting yourselves in the performance. I mean, it's, it's, especially with camp, I mean, it's one thing to manipulate puppets and not have the body of the puppeteer as part of the kind of dramaturgy of the stage. But it seems that one of the things you do when you decide to enter the performing area to manipulate the puppets how you know in different ways in different situations that you're very physical presence becomes part of the dramaturgy I'd love to know how you think about that. We, we, we use we see ourselves as in the in these shows, not an actual but we see ourselves as mediums. So we are, we are, we are there to to manipulate the puppets we we choose, we choose for that attitude on stage. So, we are totally focused on on the puppets and on the images we create. So we never look at the audience, we don't make contact with the audience. We, we do as we are aware that or integrate war, we are aware that we give energy on stage. So for instance, when I have, I have, I sit with my microphone saying a voice over and then I have to have to run on stage to make a scene when it's an energetic stage. I decide to run energetic, even though I could also run like this but then my, I use my body and my energy to run, but I'm not in that way. We are aware like we are, we are the make we are the motor we are the gasoline. We are the gasoline and the motor of this machine so we have to make these things work. And with our physical energy, or we, we, we create like like dance. It's more like choreography. We dance on stage, but like I said integrate war we have text. So then we are really giving all our acting skills to act but then we, we decided to the audience is in our back so the audience does not see our face. We decided to look at us at the screen and but then still the fact that we are there live, we are aware that the audience looks with us at the screen. So we give focus and with camp. We are aware that. Yeah, there are some scenes in which we divide puppets to different parts of the camp. And then we are also. So it's more, it's more mine or dance contribution. But with great war, Herman, his hands are often on camera. And then you know he puts in plans or he puts in debt soldiers. Actually, in the great war you don't see living puppets you just see feet and you and you look through the eyes. So it's totally a point of view and then sometimes you see like Herman's hands in on camera, making making a landscape green again like putting in. And in that way he his hands are a kind of, we are not religious but in a way, they are the hands of God, or a fake teller. Yeah, they are both storyteller but also fate who decides you live because there's also a scene where where their puppets put in and then the hands are taking lives killing them like this shooting. And they're flying through by like this. Yeah, like like in camp but it is. Yeah, like more more roles we play because we manipulate but we are also like almost perpetrated because we, we set the same emotion. So it is. Yeah, it's not that we, we are walk around like weird. But it's kind of emotionless that we do it. And with kind of distance, but yeah, it's also seen where I pick up the puppets and then I try to do that as tender as I can. So sometimes I really want to take care of the puppets. So, when it's night they go to sleep and then I really try to do it as soft as picking them up. So we, one time we take care of the puppets and other, and another moment we kill them or we just place them. So your, your personalization is really, really important as you describe it as part of the, the whole the energy or the ambiance or the subtleties of meaning in the piece but Frank I wanted to, did you have something you wanted to ask? I have a minute maybe to show on a screen to share. So we could have a small, a small excerpt. We don't have, technically we are not able. Oh, sorry. No, no, we don't have it. We got it. We got the email. You have, you have, you have a second somewhere but I have, what I have is, I have the website that I have also the link. Let me just see here to Moses. But Moses actually, it's, it's directed by lots of the beer. So we are actually not the creators of, of Moses. The creators is, is, is a lot of the beer. She, she, and she used us to play a role. So, in Moses, we play the role, we play the mass scenes, we play the plagues. We are so manipulated of the, but it's, it's not. People, you know, everybody can, can look it up. It's easy to find just a question. You know, you, one can write plays, you can dance for theater, you can, or you say you make a film. Why do you think the way you work, the idea of the model theater as a model and the camera, why, and why do you think this is the, the, the form you chose. Well, we just, it evolved. And it's also where our talent is. It's, it was not a decision. It was something that happened to us. And it was, it was based, or actually I was always interested in more, a little bit more in physical theater and in visual theater and objects. You always liked objects. And then you were also not so much fond of text theater, I think. No, no, no, no. So it was, it was something that we liked visual art very much and performance. So like with Rococo, it is more like a performance thing we do. And that's one of our elements that we really liked very much and not classical way of acting and classical way to classical. And it was our encounter with with Herman's work as a model maker, and that we applied just just by thinking wow this model is great let's let's put it in theater and this worked so well that we thought it was like an invention like oh this is so great let's do more with this and then Herman brought in working with cameras. We got a composer Arthur Sauer who designed soundscapes who made sound concepts that did well with our models. So it's just something that happened to us and we fell in love with that way of working. It was an addiction like once you can tell stories about the whole world. So why go back to a few characters. Yes, and I like films too. And in a way, I was trained as a painter on the Academy and after the Academy I didn't paint anymore I didn't know for whom and what. And I couldn't anymore and I started making objects and more three dimensional and. And now it all comes together in a way that the three dimensional models and sometimes I think I'm painting again with a camera on a flat screen but the great thing is that it's not a painting it's, it says the illusion of it has everything movie has and and and the painting it's you can play with illusion and depth and and but it's not really that the audience sees the depth by moving the camera. And at the same time, it's a three dimensional model you can make the whole world on stage looks wonderful to like in in our empire, like the whole all the green of the islands of Indonesia there looks, looks wonderful. And then on screen you see the, the, the, the little, the little dramas playing out in on these islands so like like Carol said you did the macro and micro that. Very rich art form that it's not only of course the visual that is very important but also the sound and also us acting so we a lot of ideas and things we want to express, we can do it in very different ways so it's very, it's a very rich. And the art form we invented, and it gives us the opportunity to, yeah, to tell the stories we want to tell, and, and to say things about what we think is important or things we encountered in our own life or in our family live in our etc. So we, we are able to, although it is limited in a way, and like Herman said, you cannot tell everything and sometimes we are really struggling like oh man, we want just to tell a story you know and then it's really a fight, but it is, it's so rich, and it is. It's, it's very rich. And some of your work is also it's not. So you described so beautifully, your, how you create a world through this incredible attention to detail. But there is, there is a critical point of view operating. And it's definitely there in camp, but it's also there in one work that Herman might have done alone and that is heroes, which was about September 11. And in, in that very. I live in New York so we watch the planes fly into the towers and then of course it was repeated ad nauseam by the media, but what Herman did it with hotel modern do is show that event from the vantage point of the people in the towers. So this was, and in doing that, entitling this heroes which, and David always music was the accompaniment. There, there is a humanizing of an event that you know was called beautiful by some people. So we see the plane from the vantage point of a puppet of a person standing inside the tower. And this, this is, you know, extraordinary. And the client, those kinds of choices, I think, in each of your works is goes beyond simply replication, but is an inquiry in into the event itself I just really wanted to say that I have here. I'm going to flip a cap which I, we can try to show you do that. Yes, try to show a tiny bit here. Um, let me just see if I can be successful. So, um, yes, to do this. And then I have to somehow just bear with me. I'm going to choose this in my shares. Are we good. Yes, yes. You see it. So, you know, also, the, the camp happens over the course of the day. And, um, but it also happens over the course of the Holocaust itself, when the mechanism of killing became more efficient from killing prisoners individually. To the use of cyclone being to gassing to an in between there was killing individually pushing bodies into gas chambers. So that the sense of time in your work is not literally the time of the event. It's a kind of, I don't want to say mythic, but it is time that is not exactly historical time. I'm wondering if you could talk about how you think about time. Well, we, we, um, we also we always look like what's the clock, what we call the clock of a show. And we also, of course, when you build when you build a story, you, you, you make, you, you, you, you work with you make a composition, you make a composition. And in which you can often go from, from, from small to big to medium to small again to big. And then you also have the idea of the longer, the longer line. Yeah, a play or a novel or movies always has a composition. And, and, and the difference between a picture or visual arts and theater is, is, is time. So you will be, of course, we manage time in a very aware way. And we, we often, we often play with just this thing of, they say, Yeah, you can make a day and a night, but that's in a later stage or that's, I mean, you make a rhythm when you, when you create. So when, when we work, that's also an answer of your question that you asked how do you decide which scene you put in and explained we do, we do, we do research very broadly. And then, and then we try to work out the things that we find and some things when when with our means we when we can tell them right, they can become a scene. But the montage we do like in a, in a later phase. So first we gather, we gather a lot of material, and we have many scenes, small scenes, big scenes, and that, and like in the first few phases, we did not decide what to start with. So the, when we have all this material, and we have all kinds of scenes, you know, we have, and then we think, Okay, how, how, how we're going to make the montage of this. And, and then we can, we can think of different things like for instance, okay, we make a day and a night, or we can. But for some, for example, it was very different with the Great War, that it was clear that it would start in an up way, because the soldiers that were going to war that they were. And not all of them, but they were kind of optimistic and delighted that there's going to be a war we're going to fight and then with Christmas we're back etc etc. So the performance started very often, almost in a very cheerful playful way. And then during the performance we go as the mud gets bigger and bigger we also suck in more and more and more than the audience gets deeper and deeper in that terrible war. But with making camp. It was very different because you couldn't start up or head like this classical line going down and because you were already down it was already so terrible. So, oh my God, there is no way we can be optimistic or there is some kind of hope or whatever. There's no hope. And so, in a way, like the train in the performance, with the song, the performance goes like this, one line. But in that of course, you still make a thing like in the beginning we show only before the first train comes in, we show the one or three. And execution so we do a very deliberately make. See how we dose things and also like Heather were also some some executions that were shown in other way then we think I know it's just too much we cannot show all the, all the gross things so we have to think very carefully how we do things and it's deliberate that first you see three individuals killed. And then, as you see the horror the total horror we see a gas, a gas, a guessing where thousands are killed and then we go back like we are here again. But so we we just yeah we think very well out in which order we show the all the material and sometimes we have to throw material away because like with film montage. And sometimes we think, oh, we don't have enough of this or that, and then we add more so but it always kind of has that it becomes heavier, even with camp that, you know, in the end we show all the dead bodies and in the beginning, we don't show them so that we often go from some and we start with kind of happy propaganda. Yeah, that is true. Always a little bit from to town. But it yeah or yeah, in a way a bit like commercial movies. We try kind of rhythms. We try to create rhythms that create trains that you can hop on and go on and yeah. But it's seldom a story that we tell it's mostly it's a world that we show or an, yeah, periods of our for for with our. Actually, there was also something I want to add about why we use models or what and the documentary thing that that we also like you said Holland and Indonesia I'm not sure if all the audience is aware that Indonesia was a colony of the Netherlands, Poland. So we, we, we then also thought we're going to do about time. We wanted to show 350 years in one hour. So we'd like to experiment with with this time thing like okay we do 24 hours and then we said okay let's do 350 years from the first year to the last year but that we was too much. It was it was too much but it was something that we tried and but it did because at first when we started this process we thought we want we only wanted to show the last independent war which was like the war in which the biggest war that the Netherlands fought out. But then we thought how did the Netherlands how did the Dutch get there and then we went to 16 oh something where where the Dutch actually invaded or started their first colonial activities. And this is also something which why we also like working with models, like a model is created to get a notion of scale, or to get an idea of numbers, and to see to get grip on literally big things. This is what we started for, but it also works in events, like literally very big events, like the Holocaust, like the First World War, like war in general, like the 911 attack. It helps us as artists but also what we shared it with the audience to get grip on these huge events and to just get grip on them, they're huge and then we put them in a stage, and then you can see thousands of characters, but you can see them, and you can see them all, and you can be there, and you can somehow get to get a grip on history or get a notion and what you say like we're also get in. It's not always that we film puppets but we also sometimes just film only what the puppets see, we don't even film the puppets but we just film what they see how they see the world so we really, and that's what's projected on the screen. In the audience they can see this huge world that they can try to grip up and we can be totally in it, but when you're inside you don't see the whole thing. So what happens in our theater you can see both this huge thing and the perspective inside, and what we do it's interesting that you notice that that we go some from one perspective to another, like Herman does in his movie, at the point you look from the cockpit and see these world trade towers, getting closer and closer like you have to point a few of these pilots, and from the other moment you get to point a few of the people in the towers that he does that in his animation but we also do that on stage. So this is also giving so much. Yeah, possibilities like looking things looking to history or looking to events that happened that we have to, we have to take stand in what we can see different points of view, which is super interesting of course, and and see the large, the large scale and I think this is this is a story tellers about what we've been playing with in our in our work. So that the performances are about the first world war about the Holocaust about colonization of Indonesia. And we have formed these these performances, a lot abroad. And we always talk with the audience afterwards and have with the first world war performance. For example, we performed in America we did great big tours. And at that time, the audience was in this Iraq war, and for them the performance of course it was about first world, but it was also about their war. They were fighting at that moment. And with the with camp, we performed in, in, in Russia this year and the people they were talking about the camps they had at this time where homosexuals are abandoned to and we performed in Los Angeles camp and afterwards we had talked with the people who were talking about the Mexican border. This is really interesting people make it actually but it's also about reviving history. So it's also about that you know colonization in Holland people have forgotten it or the Holocaust people are forgetting it. It's it is about camps today but it's also about the camp at that time. And it's also about that time it's also about 1600 how did how did it start. So we can it's it's also really about history and looking at history with new eyes, or we are, or with eyes that we did not have we create we can create images like you know inside the concentration camp. There was maybe there was film but the films are destroyed there were some pictures taking and taken out but not pictures of everything the camps the gas chambers were destroyed. So we, by recreating it, we can show it also like the 16th century 16th 17th century where colonization of Indonesian started, we can create that world and we film it and it's there. I think it is interesting that I think I think if you that the after the show, it almost always talk to audience almost always about the show and about what it means for today what what similar things are happening now. And that's integral. I think I never had it after in a movie about the Second World War, that you talk afterwards about the war in Iraq what was going on or another war at the moment. It's it's because maybe at this maybe because it's so it's real and unreal it's it's it's of course it's not really on Auschwitz or it's not really the world First World War, but it's also real really on stage. People see, and I see actually the building see the people and in their minds in that in their imagination, they make it real they make the puppets real people they make it a real camp. I think we're witnessing a real genocide or a real war or a real people going into Indonesia, walking through the jungle colonization, but it's happening now it's happening now in theater and also maybe that that in cinema, it's always more realistic you have new actors, you know it's more historical drama because it's more it's abstract. You think the part of this is because there isn't a verbal text. In other words, because there's no verbal text. But there is, but there is. Well, in the great. There is no as explaining in kept there's no text that that's correct room to the spectator to have their own relationship with the events. In other words, because there isn't a verbal text in camp. Yeah, it becomes iterations of the events that are portrayed are kind of iconic. But, but, but that you one can perhaps immediately make a leap to, this is not only the Holocaust aspects for now, but this is also the nature of a certain kind of incarceration, and, and a kind of industrialization of human bodies, you know with the guard in the guard tower that we can make those leaves because we're not well to a literal narrative. I'm trying that out. Yeah, no, but for campus really what you say it's true it is not it is not verbal but great war has as extras letters and almost all our other performance do have some some text so it's not it's not like in general for all our shows but in camp definitely the fact that we chose for not using language is is bringing people even more in that situation. I think also that's why we decided to to skip the language but in great war where is important although it's not big. We look through the eyes of the soldier and then the voice where you can hear their thoughts or you can hear the letters that they write in their diaries. So in that one, the text is very important because it's brings you in the mind. Sometimes we give information that we can show with. Yeah, a question. You said that it's about huge things, what you do your work about. And it's also connected to the now that moment, the time of corona we are in. Is anything changing in your thinking about theater. And are you working on anything right now. Yeah, we took the big things can also actually be things in big things have happened in our own lives for instance we made also some performance about the death of a father who died when she was very young. So the big things are not necessarily always big. In regard of using with a lot of publics a lot of that. No, it actually did not really change our way of thinking. Well, maybe, but maybe that for me theater is even more important. And what what. Well, well, well. Art, I can say, if not not only theater but art. And that's that. What's that about for maybe maybe 1015 years in in Holland. Art and artists were very. Yeah, in a way it was almost not dirty to to be an artist but it was not you were not respected in a way and the government didn't give you a feeling that art was is was worth full and important. So, and that was really about 1015 years and being artists and having a theater company. It was very commercialized so the only thing we were thinking about was how can we make money. We are very lucky to be subsidized by the government. There are so many rules you have to have to obey. Yes, yes, that it was almost making art was becoming under something like there, and that really did something with our minds as an artist, more being like a manager or being you know, and with the corona. Everything fell down and it was silent and. Yeah, people were in shock and you know what happens, happens all throughout the world. And then suddenly, people client. And they, they, they, the making art and and little initiatives came, and people were so happy when something happened, and, and suddenly also have that we get the government gives us more respect, and more respectful towards giving us the feeling that it's important, and not only the government also the people. And so that is something that is, yeah, something very positive that's long with with all the all the negative things and the terrible things that I think that's. Yeah, that is something very positive that came out of this. It became obvious that people need art that artists needed that you need it and before current there was also guys yeah but what what is art, what what what's the use of art was always the use of art and then they came a kind of commercial use of the value it has or the money the the economic value. And now everything stopped and, and theaters are closed, everything, cinemas were closed and museums, and everyone's craving for art and became more obvious now that art has a value that's in itself that's cannot be expressed in any other way and that's, that's, that's, that's, that's quite important and in midtown we are trying to. We're taking our to go to your other question what are you working on at this time we are also with a lockdown period taking our time to think to work a little bit ahead in thinking what we have of course some plans we have a we have a plan of a next part of our our empire and maybe taking another period or another colony. So we are thinking of, of going into that theme again but then maybe with, maybe also with a descendant of slaves, you know, the island was also a huge slave slave trade nation, and we really have the idea of, it would be interesting to do something with that but then of course we are all white. And we're kind of, yeah, we cannot do that on our own that would be not not a good idea so we're thinking of how to, how to make a collaboration possible maybe to make a show about that team, that theme. So we are about, yeah, but colonization evoked. And also, yeah, we were asked to make a huge family opera to take a next step in our opera in an opera work and make a concept for how we can use our art form in opera again but then and also an opera would for for both children as adults. So, yeah, we are, we are trying to think, we are thinking about that. And yeah, we are also thinking, Oh, maybe it would be nice to do some things with the VR, our glasses or to make as we have a daughter who has autism, thinking of making, making a show, especially for children who have autism and also a show that is possible to play in their schools as maybe going to theater is too hard for them. So we're also thinking about a children's play, especially then for children with autism but it would be nice if it's fun for everybody and try to make that kind of interactive or also, we are going to think about, you know, game technology or something interactive. So like new techniques and see if we can bring that in that because as our daughter is really helped by playing games, games are very important for her but also showing her the way in the world. So we're thinking also about like some kind of adventure of a little girl that is based on our daughter in a kind of game world. Well, we're just, you know, fantasizing about all these different elements that could maybe end in one of our, in our new shows. Yes. It's quite a lot. Quite a lot, but yeah, we have to, we did not choose which one is coming next. The opera is coming probably in two or three years. Yeah. And we are also talking, we are also thinking of another theater company that we find very interesting and see, talk with them, if maybe we can collaborate. Yeah. They're more actors, so. So it was here we have a lot of ideas and we are just like the three of us in the atelier and thinking about all these things and working them out and we haven't worked out yet. Very, very at the beginning and then beginning and try to. It wasn't the actually first corona lockdown kind of hit us very hard, because we also been working very hard and also had to write a new application and then also at one point, we weren't, we were the money that we asked for was not coming. So we thought we have to maybe stop with the company because we don't get subsidy anymore. So then we had to fight to get to get the subsidy back and to make the politicians give more money to artists so then we put on all our energy on that fight and it's not a creative energy. We're just fighting to get your money. So meantime, we couldn't think of our next plans and now, luckily, maybe also because of corona the government had some more money for theater and companies like us are saved and now we can breathe again and yeah, make this making being in this process of developing all these new different plans that we are coming years we will, but we will let you know. Yeah, but it's but it's a very uncertain time because actually we would have done the performances this week, but now suddenly the government said to shut down the theaters for two weeks and then it's like okay okay and so yeah it's it's very strange you have to Well, actually, I'm actually directing it's not with Herman and Elena, but I'm directing also co-production of Hotel Modern with a company which is actually also about the colony about Indonesia the colony there. It's and then for children. So then we tell the story of the Dutch colony in one of the islands of Indonesia and where yeah, there was a kind of also kind of genocide actually that the Dutch killed people from from the Banda from an island one of the Banda islands. Yeah, they killed they killed many of the people because they the Dutch wanted to keep the monopoly on trade of spices nutmeg nutmeg and and then the people of this island sold sold their spices also to other countries like people from England, people from, well, from other countries, they wanted free trade and the Dutch had no you only your you can only sell it to us. And we have this deal and then they said oh we don't have a deal we just sell to everybody who we want to and then the Dutch, they went into this island and kill kill kill the whole kill the man who resisted and the others were were made so this is really horrible story and the show that I'm directing now is also telling the story but then in a way for children, but it's still telling the story and also showing that the yeah the how the Dutch also even about monopoly and that they want to keep everything for themselves and that they don't want to share and yeah it's it's a in ways going to be a fun performance about yeah about colonialism and about monopoly. Yeah, economic things and about the importance of sharing. One of the things that is rather extraordinary thing is how much how many people today come to learn about historical events through theater and film, learn about them, learn about them in greater nuance and detail than from the more conventional means of reading history books. It seems to put an extra burden on artists in terms of really mining and representing relationships to history and and getting it right. And at the same time, having a critical lens, while constructing these great detailed stages. And it's that very reason why I wanted to draw attention to theater the real because so many methods, so many claims to true. This is what really happened we reassembled these documents for correctives to events I mean there's a great play in coming out of the UK would just call the color of justice. And it will happen well after the murder of a young man on the street by a group of white racist thoughts murdered a young black man. But, but the, the play, the performance of the play which I believe was at the tricycle theater itself. Really kind of accumulated everything that had happened assembled it digested it and presented it back for to a British audience, and really in the service of articulating the importance of what the inquiry found. And what they found was unconscious racism. So it was a kind of underscoring enclosure in that the play itself provided to to about 10 years I estimated events in the British press for the young white funds were never convicted of the crime. So I mean, that's just one example yours is another there's so much interesting work that this kind of theater does, and it puts artists in in new kinds of situations so I'm wondering, Frank, if you want to offer some closing observations. It's so great hearing about your work in your. You know, thank you Carol, you know, for being with us and for hotel modern I think someone says theater is a model itself. At the moment, you know, it's real on stage. It's a real thing, but it's a model and it shows that with imagination. And, and in a symbolic way, it shows a reality what has happened might have happened should have happened and it is real. We had the Indian writer Abhishek with us he said, there's TV shows they have films all around India but my place gets shut down by the government. It has a different way it has an impact. People remember it, and there's truth to it and I think as much as lawyers and the justice system is looking for truth, as much as I think journalists, politicians looking for artists are also looking for chosen representing to spot knowing that different levels different point of views as you said, and perhaps we listen more to a puppet. And because we don't we project on it, it's not a representative human body was might have an agenda it's not male or female often it's not really clear. I think handspring basal Jones said that that why they were successful why people listen to a puppet is because you can connect to it in a different way doesn't have an agenda can even say insulting things or other things that others don't listen to and I think the time you live in, we do need some meaning some guidance. There's the famous David Brunt film stop making sense I think we have to start making sense. It's Jenny Bass there, the rock and roll and post punk singer says and I think what you guys do the inquiries is a contribution to do that I think the idea of the theater of the real gives the gives possibility for theater artists to rethink also what they are doing what impact it can have and what it should have, perhaps always had but we have to find it in a new way and I think your work is significant because of that is their real histories alternate histories and we look at things from different ways and that's what so many of the artists we talked to said we often also go back to classics but we told it through the eyes of a minor character of a different way so that official histories saying no this is just one way to look at it and it comes from people in power and perhaps it's not really what happened just to be aware that there are multiple truth out and everybody who says this is how it is is lying to us because what we think the Trump administration or many others who want us but they are the ones we should be warned for and if someone says this is black and white is this or that one point of view it's not true and I think this work that stands for the theater of the real is of real significance and it's a great responsibility actually perhaps artists never asked for but you guys are over responsibilities of what perhaps has been neglected by educational system by the way or by history so really I think this is of great importance and what you do is also fun and it's great and it's artistic invention so it's a great contribution and I hope you will be back soon. Carol who's coming up and maybe say a little bit on the next two days of little tiny words about them and why do you have an incredible body of work I think that he's known as the master of the performed lecture and he creates inquiries into how we come to know things and whether or not what we know is actually accurate and and then on Friday is Nicholas Kent who is of course the founder of the tricycle theater and who produced many I guess they would call verbatim plays and yeah I'm very excited to speak to both of them they're both extraordinary like they're tumbled in so thank you so much it's really been great hearing about how you approach your work and trying to understand and yeah and thank you very much. It's a great pleasure. Yeah it's great to hear from Rotterdam and head with us Menno Plucker from Canada who is a big supporter of the company helps to organize their work we didn't have the time to fully go into but thank you and Menno and thanks to HowlRound for hosting us and for being a place for such I think important exchanges of ideas and for listening really to the artists and it's also remarkable how this company invented how we know Samani was a boyfriend he was in film but he did models we did we were acting we didn't like so they invented something they did not know what was going in the beginning the opposite of what we often are being taught so the way how artists create their work is of significance and an encouragement do something work with fellow artists explore what you have and create something you might find something great as Hotel Modern did and go to their website Hotelmodern.nl I guess right in Netherlands and this is one way to do it hopefully you know it will inspire the interesting the world of objects moving objects puppetry is a feel that is a real significance also because it includes an audience often easier of young audiences and something that's truly neglected and it's a great audience so thank you all and I hope you will stay safe and stay tuned in and we all hope that things will go well in the United States here and with all eyes on Georgia and we maybe we have to find a way for theater artists to get involved there and and thank you and Carol again thank you and see you all soon. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much.