 Segal talks here at the Martini Segal Theatre Center, the Graduate Center CUNY in Manhattan at the City University and another day on the planet Earth. It all looks nice and sunny if you look outside, but still we are in the middle of a corona crisis. Well, it looks like as we heard yesterday in Germany from the great Susanne Kennedy who talked to us about her her work, her research, what the virtual realities and how it's connected to Chekhov's Three Sisters and her robot oracle play that is inspired by Greece and twice to find a way to meditate and to rethink what we are doing. And she said their theaters have opened in a way. She had her first opening again and she thinks it's behind them here in America, of course. We are in the middle of it and somehow have the feeling it's the beginning, Florida especially, but also California. Good news for us at the University, foreign students, international students can come, can stay. It was a sham. It was a terrible and reckless suggestion from this administration that mishandled so, so very much. And luckily we have artists with us who see the present, aren't the present, have been on the right side of social justice, the complex struggle for freedom and liberties and always being on the side of a social progress. Normally, and always as we do, we go around the world this week. We focus a little bit back again of New York, often we have four, three, four internationals, but this time we have a view on the New York Pink Jong joined us on Monday. Karidat switch will be with us on Friday. Tomorrow Tiago Rodriguez from Portugal, a great director will talk to us, but with us today we have two legends of the New York theater. People who belong to the landscape and are part of the Grand Canyons, if you would say so. It's Lee Brewer from the Marble Mines and Maud Mitchell, both of them together, a couple, a creative couple, like by the way. So many also we had here was from around the world seems to be something to work together and that works. And both of them have done a tremendous work and we're going to hear from them today, but how do they experience Corona? How was it? Where were they when it happened and what is on their minds? And I'm going to read a little bit. Most of you already know who they are, but Maud Mitchell, who is an artistic associate of Marble Mines, he's an actor, dramaturg and an adapter, she had drama, League nominations, Village Voice, Obi Award for playing in the legendary Marble Mines dollhouse. Many people argue and I think I would agree most probably no production of dollhouse in the history of theater has traveled so much, not even the Charbonne of the great Austro-Mayo one, even so I do prefer the Marble Mines version is perhaps the best adaptation I have seen in my lifetime. And they traveled to 33 venues on five continents and and for over two decades she's collaborating with Lee Brewer and many, many others and they have been around the world. Lee Brewer is Chivalier Désard, a letter from France, something I would love to have, but only special people like Lee have that. He's a MacArthur Fellow and he's a writer, director, a poet, lyricist, filmmaker, adapter, producer, and a teacher who expends the boundaries of storytelling in theater. He's the founding artistic director of Mabu Mines, his work is the Gospel of Colonies is an unprecedented merger of Greek theater and gospel service and whoever saw it and knows how what an fantastic and great work that is that perhaps some of the few things that comes close to Bryce 3 Penny opera where we had a critical success and musical but also aesthetically and theater people loved it, it's a play. He's a theater maker, theater maker. So, of course, his Marble Mines dollhouse is a must see for everybody. I'm not sure if it's online at these times. And he is also has publications with TCG, theater communication groups about La Divina caricatura, the Bunraco meets downtown, and getting off and he is one who's very early work goes back to the Berliners ensemble, which he visited so I apologize for speaking so much it's really about listening to you we want to hear what's on your mind we need to hear from artists, not just from the politicians economists and virologists artists voices are significant they create what we now see is missing life, the experience of life, the deep expensive and the possibility for a change for a change of perception of our virtual headsets, which dream like we put everything together as Thomas Metzger that German philosopher says who was quoted by Kennedy yesterday so Lee and Maude, how are you, where are you and I don't know maybe Lee you start off where are you. We are in Brooklyn. Yeah. And I think the easiest way to say it is the beginning of retirement try to figure out a little bit about what retirement really is. I think I have to be as big louder. I couldn't fully hear. Yeah. I was saying that I think the thing to think about me is morality. I feel that it's a very, very interesting time to feel out the zeitgeist of the world, morally, and all of these things that have gone so long, unquestioned in the United States to be questioned finally I think it's a fantastic things and I'm hoping at this point that it's a little bit of a house cleaning, but at this point, it's kind of a stage in cleaning where everything gets dirtier. And I think it'll get dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and hope the cleaning will come after all of this muck. I'm really interested in this particular time. I think there's elements of it that are, there's a lot to think about helicopters. Right, we're in the middle of a helicopter city here. Is it demonstration or you know, I think that what's special about this time Frank is that you can feel the events take form. You can feel them come into a kind of a physical reality. The demonstrations have been amazing. And I think that the effort to change the social structure seems to be deepening and deepening and deepening. Hopefully, it will achieve something. It will not be bought off, as usual. But I think that this looks like it has a chance. There's so much going on and it's so chaotic so much. There are so many factions and the factions are so aggressive toward each other. People are fighting their personal wars and they're fighting their personal wars in social media and in theater. Everybody has. They're selling something. You're telling it, you know, there's something you begin to understand about this country that is all about selling. You can't stop selling yourself. You can't stop selling your points of view. And you can't stop the people that feel that since everything is for sale, all they have to do is amass amounts of money and they buy it. So pretty soon you're a boss person. I've gone through a lot of evolutions here to try to avoid being bought people. I work at Mabu is an attempt to stay above the market in that sense. I feel that it's been a somewhat successful Bible so far, but it's something that takes every ounce of your energy all the time. It's a great big whirlpool. You can get caught up in it at any time. It's a personal whirlpool. It's yet to not only resist being bought, they have to resist being want to be bought. It's it's time to come to terms with your kind of emotional and spiritual reality. I feel that it's a moment to be reckoned to come to terms with what we're doing on Earth, who we are, what kind of animals we are, and how to contain ourselves, how to put ourselves in a proper zoo. The world outside is shocking. I don't think there is any dearth of material. I think it's just all material. It's all spilling out. It's kind of like a volcano erupting and it's very exciting in many ways. But I think the safest thing, of course, is to be an observer and to try to track and to figure out what's happening and how our path is going to wind between the various pitfalls. You know what it's like? It's kind of like bunions of pilgrim's progress. You walk down the path and you see press over five and the potentiality for publicity, the potentiality for enhancing one's career, enhancing one's voice. It's almost something in this pilgrim's progress that says, where is the cry for simplicity? Where is the cry to settle back, to stay at ease, to observe, to keep one's balance? I think that's the big fellow today, just keep one's balance in the middle of all of these conflicting demands. The slough of despair. Right. So I love bunion and I would see, I like to see my life metaphorically and I like to see moments in it where I'm in different classics of literature. And I think at this particular moment, I'm in pilgrim's progress and looking for the path, looking for the narrow gate and trying to find how and where and what kind of salvation lies and what point of the compass. I think it's a very confusing time, but a very exciting time. And I believe that the massive destruction from the virus is part of an Armageddon. You know, it's time to think about a lot of end of the world prophecies. I certainly think it's time to think of the end of the theater prophecies. And I appreciate so much everyone's efforts to get moving again to have performances again to come back into the film itself. But I think it may be the best time to try to walk along the edge to try to look down, observe and see what the grand metaphor is. So it's, that's where I'm at. Looking at trying to figure out how to look at things and how to look at things in my metaphors. So looking at this mode, how is the moment for you? I think, you know, it keeps shifting. But initially, as you can tell, we have been, and I have been thinking a lot about end of life issues and mortality for some time now. Lee was diagnosed with stage four kidney disease back in the fall of 2013. But then two years ago in the summer of 2018, that shifted to stage five and this country has very much incentivized dialysis care and which is very big business, you know, it's a multi-billion dollar business. There's a lot of racial and food injustice issues around kidney disease. And we chose not to pursue dialysis, but to try and manage it palliatively or conservatively. Other countries like New Zealand and Australia and Canada and the UK are ahead of the US in that. And it's not a lot of data in some ways about the best way to proceed. But I think doing very well and all things considered. And last year, not knowing that this was going to happen, we tried to say yes to as much as we could say yes to. And it came our way. So we were very fortunate. I mean, Lee was honored in a few situations and we were able to travel to the Cairo Festival. And that was very meaningful to me because my parents lived in Cairo for five years in the early 80s. And then in Yemen for three years and have been to Cairo a number of times so I think the last time we've been to it was 2008 before that so that the ability to still like our work and our lives have always been fueled by that kind of travel and interaction with artists and then we were we accepted an invitation to go give a small presentation in Oxford also. It's that kind of funny thing we saw our next door neighbor at the British Museum looking at the Assyrian collection and I saw an old college friend who at Oxford we just pumped into him by random he was a scholar there. But then this year things pulling in and at first initially that actually felt good to be in line with here been thinking about mortality and how to help somebody on their journey at the end. And then it felt like the whole world was thinking about that in a way. And the quiet for a while was quite beautiful that you could hear the birds sing again and this neighborhood can be very quiet now it's not I'm sorry all the helicopters. But I think then the chance to take a deeper breath and but now as things both start up again but we also understand that this is really just the beginning of a very long road. We've been listening to and reading like Laurie Garrett to talking about you know we're really looking at three years or more I think, or that this is just things will not be the same. And there's a sense now of being in this we've always been good in small spaces, we've lived in. This has been our base for very lucky for 20 years but we've come and gone. I don't think we've ever been in one. We've never been here this long before and it's a studio and because Lee is very high risk I just feel like there's a loss of autonomy. I don't want him to go take the garbage out or, and we have to come down in the elevator which I feel like it's the elevator stands between us and the outside world and I know we're great to a more fortunate that and many many, but I keep on turning over in my mind how do you. Where do we go from here and what will this be like six months from now or or a year from now and and and if we end up enrolling in hospice here what will that be like you know. There are some things that we haven't watched a lot online or things like that I think that what feeds us more as we've gone back to our bookshelves and we also have one of those little free libraries in the neighborhood one of those little boxes. So there's that random surprise of. That's where sort of the fiction tends to come from but other things to or people have sent us books and there's a pleasure in that. You know some of those questions are you still an artist if you don't make art. We got these wonderful. Solar powered rainbow makers and they have been like, because it's every day it shifts and the room becomes full of, you can see we don't have things on the wall but the light reflected is stunning sometimes they try to take a walk each day for exercise and sometimes I'm like we have to go back it's the rainbow we have to go back out. I, you know, sometimes things feel. I think initially we try I tried to pull back and look at this historically so I read a lot about 1918 didn't seem like enough. I tried to pull back further and I, you know, reread the distant mirror and thinking about the black death and didn't feel like enough and pull back and start reading about the six that extinctions and dinosaurs and that seemed more helpful in the long, long stretch of things. So, so here and I think like a lot of people, some days are fine and some days, not so fine. Frank, kind of what I find is that I'm happiest if I can live a period of time within a metaphor that I'm interested in. I was looking around for the right one for me now and dying seems to be it. Is that a metaphor? I think the more I can understand the world in terms of dying, the better and the more interesting it can be for me. I get interested in the present state and turn it into a metaphor in that way, I think, to the I know I interrupted you you were talking about a metaphor and to lean into it. No, I was talking about a way of coming to terms with what I feel just walking out on the street. There's a tremendous amount of anger out there. And I feel that my own anger can react sympathetically with this anger. I feel that, you know, much of the world and the interaction of human beings in it, the theater of it is disgusting. This is the uberwa of our times. I feel that I need to find an emotional response to everything that I believe in and that I can build on. And anger is half of it. The other half is a perspective for anger. I really feel that this is one of the problems with seeing all of this turmoil around us in the streets and things like that, that there is the anger, but it's hard to find a perspective on it. And I think that a combination of thinking on both sides is the most interesting is this particular point for me. I don't feel that I understand very much of what's going on. I have a lot to do with the black community when I was working with. But little by little, I'm learning about what I don't know. I only knew a part of the black community. I was very familiar with the church community. I wasn't very familiar with the sports community. It's fascinating to see that, you know, how our minds get divided and the perspectives get forced upon us, that we look at things from our own experience. And I'm looking at stuff from the church experience that I had in gospel of fullness, and which was critically important to me. And I'm trying to see that as proliferating in the rest of black anger at this point. And I don't quite see it all. So there's so much that I don't understand. Actually, rather than rushing in and trying to take part, I want to sit back and understand a little bit. Stand back. And for me, it's understanding the I mean, I, my childhood was in Hong Kong and Tallahassee, Florida during the early years of integration. And I spoke to a lot of prejudice seeing racism and action lived on a street in which all the houses flew the stars and bars that fled that world. Didn't want to look back. The other day when NASCAR took down the Confederate flag. I, I, what a sea change to see that in your life. I understand what that means. It's enormous. What I didn't realize was the really systematic economic structures in place for the structures in place for economic exploitation. And I almost feel now like we were talking about the other day and I said I just feel like the color of the skin is just, it was just a pretext for how you choose the group that you're going to enslave. It's really this desire for human beings to separate into those who can enslave and those who end up being enslaved and how convenient that there was a color, but that it came on top of that just so many levels of slavery around the world and through history. Anyway, it's, it's marvelous to see that the lid come off and the light come in and Well, the big thing is, is the light coming in after the light was coming off? A little bit of it, a little bit. Well, I, you know, take myself as an example because I think, well, how naive of I that I thought that it was fundamental. The last period of period of unrest. Yeah, I am absolutely shocked at what a pile of shit this country is actually and the behaviors in it. I'm totally shocked and you know, worried about making a gesture, making a statement, thinking, oh my white boy, what do you have to say? And yeah, I did my bit. I tried to be a good person and do a good piece of work without loneliness. But I don't know, there's a, there's another end to it. I need to sit back and examine that whole process, what happened with that project. Why I thought it was important, why I feel now that it was the center of my life for a long period of time and how I related to the black community. It's, it's a mind-boggling project. You just And for me, that piece was dollhouse where I feel like I grew up with her and had this opportunity to come into my own voices and artists. What was interesting about being in Cairo was that in 2008, the film was shown as part of the official festival offerings and the presenter that in the early 80s, you know, there was not this ubiquitous head scarf. There was a more of a secular divide. And the young, it was very well attended and there were a lot of young women who were indeed wearing head scarves. This is 2008. And I felt the presenter really pushed people, translated several times into Arabic that there was nudity in the piece. And I felt like pushed the young women out. They wanted to see it. And then, and at that time there had only been two other productions of dollhouse in Egypt. Just that year. Various adaptations. So now here we are. 11 years later. And both the State Department, the American Embassy who are just under siege, you know, because the Trump administration just gutted the State Department. So we gave a presentation there and then we gave presentations through the festival and they all asked for clips beforehand to censor them. And they returned clips to us and they said, we cannot show this. We'll, you know, we cannot, we just cannot show. Had to be so careful to pick things that wouldn't put them in jeopardy. And there was a different kind of agitation on the streets, of course. There were times when we were out. I mean, we were very well cared for and very protected, but they're, we had wanted to walk in a few places. And of course he attracted a lot of attention in some of the areas, and are we are accompanied by someone who said, I'm telling them that you're English, that you're from the UK, please don't contradict me. Don't worry, I won't. Don't worry, I won't. American artists have to hide that they're from America. What do you guys think about theater now that is your perspective changing what you've been postmates that's great contributions and work. What do you think about the in general and in this time what is the connection. I think when, when live performances resume. I think there's going to be a real thirst for them a real hunger for them. For now, I think it's great to experiment and try these different modes although I see in Europe that they're able to do street theater now in certain places. But I'm not drawn to this form. Because for me as a performer there's something I like laughter and I like to hear that but what I really like as a performer is when the sort of a change in the density of the air in the room. There's that sense of that quiet of the attentiveness that and the visceral connection between the other actors. So I think in that way. It's an opportunity to think about what you what excites one about theater what what the the deep connect is with theater. But it's certainly, I think it's going to require a lot of patience and resourcefulness for before it resumes and I just might. We also are waiting with faded breath to see what's going to happen to the unemployment extension here in this country. Hard times, but I think in the longer view, I think that there will be a kind of a replenishment. I'm sure now for several years there will just be more filmification of theater more. More zooming or electronic, but I think there's also someone just recently asked me what I participate in sort of a one of those pieces that are one on one audience member one performer short piece 10 minutes. I'm curious to try we know with a plexiglass in between. I'm curious to try to see how much of a connection you can, you can get, you know. So they'll be. I think I imagine also when things start up again that they will start small and maybe more community based. That's what I'm thinking. Well, I think small just always mean community base. I mean, I keep parking back to when I started to work in theater is that Francisco a long long time ago. And what what the problems that did not exist is you just well financially the whole thing was on a different foot. People got together within the atmosphere of a kind of like a jam session. They wanted to. They wanted to express themselves. They did almost privately. And this was at the moment that performance art was being born and that I think what later became experimental theater was just a little louder because of the helicopter what later became experimental theater was coming more present. And it's where my tradition began. Feel very nostalgic for this, but there were very deep problems for example, all of us had separate jobs and none of us actually look to theater for a living. And we're all very young and healthier. We didn't have to conserve our energy that point. I think I'm rather unhappy with the monetization of everything in the theater itself. Everything that's not cost so much and cost so much to see cost so much to do that it kind of puts up a barrier to any kind of thinking. It's easier to think on a piece of paper so I feel that that's what you're doing is writing is the way out. I just don't really feel that I want to put another ounce of energy into raising more money for anything. I'm sick to hell of raising money for things, of making people for money of, well, yeah, it's that's it and just sick and tired of the money equation. And I worry because I do think for theater makers there's theater viewers and theater makers but especially for for young people and young kids I think there's a period of time when it is about self expression it's a means you're attracted to it because for many people can save their lives and it's like so I think about school programs and I worry that those budgets will just be slashed and burnt because except that someone invited me to be on a sort of a chat the other night with some small theaters in the northeast and they're doing a circus program with like 200 kids on zoom and I was like wow what can that what's that like and they said that the kids are really participating and so that felt hopeful to me because I think that that's where you get the next generation of people who are drawn to connecting and creating theater. How important was the I remember you once talked about you've been so many times to the seagull but about the Berlin ensemble and you were there early on tell us was that formative was this your guiding spirit next to the San Francisco work it was critical of we went to visit the Berlin ensemble when we were located in Paris and I feel that it was transformative I remember that we lived in a a little kind of bed and breakfast temporarily just on the other side of checkpoint Charlie and we would go through checkpoint Charlie and sneak stuff in different people and records like that it was we were received like family and we were invited to attend rehearsals I got many of my original directorial ideas observing the process of the Berlin ensemble I remember you know the idea of multiple direction we were watching rehearsals of monest mon and I was absolutely astounded by the fact that there was a head director and there were four or five underling directors all of whom were watching different actors and chorus and then there would be large discussions afterwards it was tremendously open Lago was still alive and it was she was the mother of us all and it was really pretty exciting you worked with Helena you saw Helena Weigel work and yeah I saw her doing Coriolence and it was pretty exciting we've been an old friend of ours Tony McCotchie who used to be a city center and also Lee's manager and he's come back into our lives to help spearhead putting together Lee's archives and getting them placed and it's been you have always said to me you need to have five balls in the air at all time because you never know which one's going to drop so looking at this huge body of work incredible, yeah and how many projects didn't come you know we of course fasten on the ones that make it out of the gate and into the world but so many projects that were only made it to X stage of development and it might have been some years of development but I think that they find their way into other pieces but there's there's a maybe 25% of the projects undone and completed and finished and there's something actually encouraging about that to understand that because you can't control all the elements you can't control whether or not they come out I think to go back to the Berlin ensemble it was exciting in certain images to stay with you I remember watching Homer Tanti and Eckhart Schoen at that point Homer was doing gobbles and he was singing a song and he was in the boxes and he hooked his legs over the edge of the box and leaned over backwards so he became a gargoyle and he sang it as a gargoyle it was absolutely thrilling but these are images to stay with me you know 23 years after I've seen them and they are the critical ones seeing how much Tanti's gargoyle it was just I will never ever forget it and it was absolutely phenomenal yeah that is a stunning to think that you starting in San Francisco you went on your own to the Berlin ensemble you directed the comedy font says there's a space named after you guys at PS1 or the old PS1-22 now the performance space still New York didn't perhaps produce you the way a New York artist of your career and caliber should be and now it's shut down in COVID what are your thoughts on theater in New York City at the moment what do you think about it? it's good to be rich it would be nice to be rich because I think that would have changed the ballgame but that just would have been a very different path for you because there's I well it would have been the path that makes it impossible to understand black lives matter because I understood I understand that on the level of being poor along with most of the black lives that do matter and I feel an identification financially with that particular movement I understand what it is to be poor and the travel that fed us when we would have work someplace and then we would try and take a little trip but that was all backpacking it was all like and there you have a very different experience I have no doubt that if you had more resources you would have traveled but the travel would have been very different yeah there were things that were for example when I got tied into Kuri Atom in India with hmm sorry oh no yeah it was critical to understand that this was a theater that kept its pristine quality by hiding inside the Brown community being a church theater and when it came out in the world it was amazing experience to see it because it was unchanged for 2000 years the the travels were absolutely you know critical in terms of my understanding of what I wanted to say and what I wanted to do I learned so much in India and so much in Europe it was pretty amazing I I'm also learning a great deal in America at this point and what I'm learning is be careful it's incredibly seductive but it's it's not a seduction that seduction that I feel I can be part of or that I can receive without resisting the I keep thinking it's kind of like a big alcoholics anonymous meeting where everybody wants to get up and talk about their lives and talk about this and talk about that in other words it's an ego blowout there is absolutely no real interest in anybody else or anything else other than the cell and everybody wants their five minutes I think Andy Warhol had it locked when he called it the 15 minutes of fame and it's it's an interesting interesting thing to try to understand capitalism it's terrifying and I think as terrifying as anything else we have that is organizing our whole system the idea existing in the world as it stands the idea that it's you have to trade you have to produce and you have to sell and buy is just disgusting like a different model it's like a different model the so I'm always kind of when I try to hear the sincerity of the different positions and the politics is going on now it's interesting to try to figure out how much is salesmanship how much is publicity how much is publicity how much is the truth how much is it really important to you and how much do you just want to get your face on camera it's a hard choice we've been spending a lot of time in a small space talking what was for you the what was for you the essential you did so great the early work I saw a lot of the screenings again what were you trying to do what was important to you or is my friend John came up with a metaphor of the jam position pretty much hit it I wanted to get this feeling of everyone contributing their melody to a larger whole and that there would be a form that will arise from it I think music is the key to it I think that if we can feel all the currents political are joining together to make a statement that and you can discern what that statement is that you will have achieved a tremendous revelation about what our times and what our lives now are all about that you have to listen harder and you have to look at things and it takes time and it takes leisure so most of us are prevented from doing this by the fact that we have the task of living the task of supporting people I have five children and I know a little bit about that it doesn't make for a kind of a philosophical overview it doesn't allow for that it embeds you inside the turmoil I think looking on top watching it as a whole is the most exciting thing I can do at this particular point so I've been trying to read a little bit and think a little bit but just basically look and feel what's going on outside because even before this year we have been talking about that seemed to be this couple of years preceding it that we're spending more and more time trying to find the money for the pieces and dealing with logistics and less time as theater creators or creative time begging people for money is the biggest waste of time for creative there's just less satisfaction that way but I wanted to say in terms of what Lee what you your jam session that from a performer's point of view I think that's why it's a particular kind of satisfaction like a deep satisfaction to be in one of Lee's pieces because one he builds the part on the performers on the particular skills and encourages a voice so you feel like your voice is heard amplified and one is always soloing yeah you take and so it's just a same time though you feel like you're part of a larger whole and there's this transcendence that can happen and that I think is this deep desire for a lot of artists I think that's at the core is that you you want to transmogrify and I think that's why some of the pieces that Lee has done have these long lives because the performers come back to that piece because there's something deep that gets expressed for them that doesn't necessarily happen in all modes of work or theater which have different may call and deliver different kinds of satisfaction to audience the other thing is the constant search for a metaphor and the one I found was working in animal metaphor a lot I did a lot of work spinning off the metaphors of animals the red horse animation shaggy dog animation and but I feel it permeates everything I'm doing that I just keep seeing everybody seeing animals I kind of wanted to do all the classics as apes in the recent thing that we did in the Tennessee Williams Place piece I had a couple of apes because I had some ape costumes and it was wonderful because it's a very Brechtian idea in that the working ape costume would alienate the moment particularly if an ape was playing Hamlet or an ape was playing some exciting classic but we had an ape to ballet I feel that Brecht had some of the best ideas about how to set up a double view of all realities a view in which we see the image and which we see the context and how we try to put them together and they don't always fit a little bit I would love to do more work with these ape costumes they were very exciting and they meant a lot of meaning to me that was McGann George who sadly died too young last year costumer hood costume many of these pieces I do remember when you once talked about the dollhouse and there was also the great Ustermeyer production which I also liked very much from the show but the different approaches that you went to the original Norwegian language tried to find the strangest obscure translation that is close to the strangeness of the world and then you did something with it something different a whimsical set design a small little person playing tour a modern adaptation a proud animator modern language adaptation and the rest was the joint and the setting was a realistic Bauhaus it couldn't have been more opposite so your dramaturgical ideas and they worked so beautiful and also modern scenes tell us a bit when you look at theater what do you see well I have a preconception and that image of my mind and then I look to see how close the theater is to my preconception and where it differs it's always a comparison I feel that my preconception is what I want to happen on stage and then what happens on stage is always a version or a reversion or a contradiction of what is going on in my mind so I've always had this dialectic about what I want to have happen and what is happening and what I see in theater is it always poses this kind of dialectical problem of are you really observing or are you observing a transmutation it just doesn't always seem to be that the theater that you see is the theater that's there in front of you I think the theater that you see it and what's there in front of you is a critique perhaps of the theater that's in your head so I do feel that Greg had a great deal to teach this way about observing this economy of thoughts and realities and I really feel that I was the most there we got the dollhouse image from a production that I saw at the ensemble at that particular point the I remember Eckhart Scholl and Helmholtz were both in it and they were the two shortest actors on stage and the entire army surrounding them were almost six feet and they all had football helmets on and they all had shoulder pads they were monstrous soldiers and I just thought I instantly had to make the transference that if power was related to size if the shortest people were the most powerful if they were the officers this was in Gorilla that we could do the same thing with gender out of that came the concept of the small male large female of images what I liked about what happened was that you could tell what the piece was about by just looking at the Casper you could see them there was Torra Hall here and there was Nora Hul and the maid was the biggest person it was about a transmutation of the ideas of power to size in reverse and a simple equation like that produced so many ramifications that we had a great play and we had something that was really meaningful to so many people worldwide because you could just see if the little person was the most powerful because of the littleist then we could have an equation that's going to go someplace so this is how Dalhans began and I very, very appreciative of what I learned from Blair ensemble I learned the most there what should theater artists keep in mind from your body of work both of you of course but also Lee of your experience with Corona what lessons from what you learned in your work life they should keep in mind what do you think will work what will be a strong a strong format that could respond to the time you live in because we that's an enormous question I wait for them to answer it because I don't know I hope they take this idea of a balance between conflicting metaphors I hope they take this I kind of think of it's always possible to see a theatrical moment in terms of a scale that if you put so much weight here then the balance is going to shift back and forth like this I remember that when I was working on one piece I kind of wanted to put a balance between a Disney interpretation and a metaphysical interpretation so that there would always be a little bit of a I think if I'm able to hit this balance I feel the moment is realized the idea of trying for this balance I think is what I have offered that it's a way of looking up and down at the same time it's a way of seeing theater as a royal play thing and as something up in the street at the same time it's a big long parade and what we want to see pass in front of us are two different some schools that you would see in Brazil and you always have every theatrical dance and every theatrical moment it's always, it comes and it goes and you catch it as it passes I feel that I'm part of this parade and I have to be caught in passing and sometimes I'm caught and sometimes people are having smoke, I'm going by and missed it but the one thing I don't want to be trapped in is being observed and negated by a kind of a pre-ordained observation people who think they know what I'm about and they think they know what I'm trying to say but they don't quite get it I feel when I offer something it's like a little pulpit and it's like I'm preaching and it's very easy not to listen to the preacher it's very easy to sneak out of the church but I would love it if I was able to hold the attention of the whole congregation very briefly whether it's with animal metaphors or whether it's with my balance theory I just think that if I have something to say somebody will hear it and if I don't it's better than nobody hears it but I would just add to that that sometimes when someone has a very large body of work there's a piece here several pieces that emerge but it's not one piece it's it's hard to see the whole and also one of the things that of course was reinforced to me through those years of touring with all has which I hadn't thought about a lot beforehand but when you have the opportunity to do something again and again that it's not one night that you can't that's why we return to the theater that one seeing one night I'd always thought that that was maybe people go back and see the same piece again and again but especially with somebody like Lees whose work is not fixed because there are such variations sometimes very large and sometimes subtle as we're looking at the archival footage for well Dollhouse is an example but also something like Red Beads which we came across a tape from 1982 that was like a fully realized workshop with a William Spencer as the composer who we were working with at the time who's since died he's out in Seattle and then he didn't pick it up again return to it again until the late 90s and then it didn't come to the Skirball until 2005 through that piece you see so many variants and such you see elements that work their way into other pieces but like those in the 1982 version there's a little house that gets played like a piano I think of Peter and Wendy but I think of Dollhouse I guess this is we had spoken to had BAM Archivist and she's one of those people who she's so in the right job and she was talking about how she was so glad that we were doing this work now and not waiting until Lee was not able to participate because she's like don't think of it as dusty work that you have to detail this or detail that now and to your ideas about your work it's an opportunity to go back and to try and thread your path through 60 years of work is who knows what the thinking will be at the other end of it So where will you go to BAM? Right now it's Yale that's interested. We had spoken with them right before we were lucky with the last people that they spoke with before everything shut down but we don't know when their acquisitions will She had recommended Yale as the way now I know more about archives than I ever understood about collections talking to one another and it seemed and we loved the archivist that we met with and we were quite wonderful too so we'll see what happens I'm surprised there have been some moving things like one of Lee's oldest friends from college was it also high school? Don who died last year but he had kept these three copies of the three earliest scripts that Lee wrote when he was in his late teens early 20s and programs and we tend not to keep things so much but these sources that was also just very moving that here's this friend who knew who saw something who believed in you and supported through the years working on one's archives was really scary to look at this stuff it is really petrified you did not like the German audio that was not produced he was like oh thank god that wasn't produced I think visual artists are much better in archiving we theater people are in the moment and in a way yes as you say even the doll house exists then only in that moment with Buddy on stage it's not there when it's just somewhere in the script like music you know it only exists it is played but it's written down so it's this incredible mysterious mysterious thing so I think and Pink Chong also talked about he went through all his boxes and he says he's stunned about how many dozens and dozens and dozens of projects that never happened and it's a time yes it's amazing yes all the ones that didn't happen yeah and it's also something to think about but they are connected to the entire so it's a great thing and I think also in theater and in theater history it should be much more work on archives instead of the essays and the compositions and theoretical reflections on work I think it's something that universities and Yale does a great job also part of NYU to engage with the idea of an archive and then also find a way to perform it so maybe one day you could do a work all the plays we never did and why which would be so funny to look at some of those early ones performing knowledge and performing performing archives which is a genre in itself becoming closer to the end maybe for our listeners also for the artists how should we think of this time how should we give meaning this unprecedented time where we feel we live inside a catastrophe movie so what should we do where did you guys find meaning I mean you touched on it but still as a way for young artists maybe also what should they focus on what's important oh we're supposed to be pundits there I only can speak from like how we moved bit by bit I think of course we're focused on health anyway but it seems you could tell how and we've had friends who have and colleagues who have died from COVID so there was a sense of how do you keep yourself healthy both mentally and physically and we're both T-totalers now I know some people it's been the other way but that's a good feeling that's a cleansing and we started doing well one of Lee's sons started doing the Wim Hof exercises and then they all started doing it and then they're pressuring us to do it and then Lee started and then I joined and that's rather extraordinary that's these transformative things that can happen in a small space that you have control over inside your and then there's the way that we've been walking around the neighborhood looking really looking at things we just and you feel a little silly sometimes that you have missed these things I we walk down the street there's a redwood tree in our neighborhood and we're always rushing before we miss that tree so there's pleasure in that I think that I think it's hardest of course for young people who feel like I'm becombed how do I so I think you have to find different ways to feed yourself and not think of this as a dead time but actually replenishment reloading Lee what do you think? you said reloading oh I said reloading I think well looking being focused on the archives has drugged my memory in so many different ways I started thinking about my memory and I would like to write something about memory and I started it and I've been working on it it's a very complicated idea of life in which the life is memory I know there's a lot of theories of thinking that have to do with memory they don't instantly come to mind one of the problems about aging is things don't really come to mind the way they used to but memory is always there and just the idea of jumping image to image in my life has always been an exciting moment for me I remember just recently with all my kids we took a trip down to the Shenandoah valley where I grew up I was 8 or 9 years old when I was there and we found the hotel that we lived in and it was still there we found the second grade that I went to and that room was still there and my memory became jogged adjusted and things like that suddenly I was living in a different age I just wasn't in the present anymore I feel that art is in reality or one aspect of it is escape art and looking for escapes is a big part of where one goes for ideas I think travel has been enormous escape for us escape for what I don't know and escape to what I don't know but it's certainly a change of scene it's turning the page it's finding a new a new metaphor it's freeing you from having to to giving you a chance to see that there are different ways of living because it's so easy to just be stuck in whatever your cultural milieu is I think that one of the great things about now is the the times the insecurity of the times I think that it's all kind of really exciting and really informative I don't know what's going to happen at this point I don't think anybody does but it's just really exciting to follow it step by step by step by step it's also hard to take it too seriously because we've seen it all before this is where memory comes in I can remember the hundreds of demonstrations that I was part of and I can remember what I felt I can remember how I thought I was going to change the world at this time or that time and how the world didn't decide it was going to change for me and I wonder about how all of this will ultimately materialize in a different America will America emerge cleaner will it be more handleable because here escape is possible not anymore because we can't travel that way but it always was an option to get out to see something new to try and so now I have to turn and deal with what is right here and whether the escape is internal that's a big one can you I think these are big questions but they are enough to say interested and I'm not quite so calm and sleepy because I'm dealing more with the logistics of our life but I think this is a good place to be at 83 remarkable and I think this is also very significant advice to be there to observe to think about escape some people say Kafka's work is all about the exit, how do we get out on the other hand there's an internal life we have to escape from and do we get out and connect to something deeper yesterday also Susanna Kennedy talked about that that she felt three sisters are caught in a loop and can't get out they never get to Moscow but what is that really is Moscow for them the Moscow and she tried it to solve it with other questions so it's really of great great great significance what you both talked about and what you shared and it will make us think and have better questions and Lee congratulations also more about Lee also of your work, your body of work what you created over decades and decades and it's remarkable this extraordinary and I'm sorry that you had to struggle so hard I know when you came to some of the films so the Segal and you were in the treatment with all what you were going through and what you think about and that your personal life coincidates with what someone mentioned on the show the Requiem for a Species that potentially mankind might not survive this is just one of them but many many have never been really possible thinking but it's a different time now but we all hope that it will lead as you said to something that's a cleaning that's changing and we will all find something that is strong about we do not know it's a creation myth we have to make choices and we do not know where it is in the middle of it so really both of you thank you thank you for taking the time for taking the conversation so serious for sharing what's also not easy and hard and thank you for being present and for being with us and congratulations on this series it's pretty exciting thank you that means a lot to us it's a small contribution what we could do and as theater artists like you are tomorrow we have Thiago Rodriguez from Portugal a great director from Europe we hear what he has to say and what he sings and how it is going in Portugal and Karita switch will conclude this week of your experience as a Latinx artist, writer, translator essayist, journalist and about this both of you thank you thanks for all around for hosting us Vijay, Sian, Travis Sanyang and Andy at the Seagull and to listeners thank you for listening it is important it's important for Lee and Ma to know that there are people out there who do care, who listen who share the suffering the joyful suffering the sharing of it in a joyful way theater artists are close to life but we deal with questions of death all the time and we have done it and you have done it since your very very early work so it is quite extraordinary moment we live through so thank you and hope to see you guys those and it will be interesting to see what work will come out what will you produce whether it is on screen once there will be smaller spaces open up so I hope we will continue to see the extension of your mind and the memories that perhaps as some people argue they are not in our brain cells how could it be a liver can store images why should a brain people say perhaps it's all stored outside and we just access it when we need it so fascinating ideas about dark matter and memories and all of us so thank you and to our audience really thank you for listening and taking the time and out of the busy life and how much you all work and we all work so much more and have less time than we sing so it's very meaningful for us goodbye and see you soon thank you really really thank you