 Welcome everybody back here to Siegel Talks at the Monteney Siegel Theatre Center, the Graduate Center CUNY of the City University here in Manhattan. My name is Frank Henschkram, running the Siegel Theatre Center. Now we have been running these talks for 10 weeks. We're hearing from artists around the world, around the globe, what their experiences in the time of Corona and how they are thinking, what they, it's on their mind, how what we experience is changing and whether it's an authentic change and about theater, what will it do to theater, what has it already done and what will happen to that art form we are working in and it is uncertain what is happening. We live into great times of uncertainty. We do not know what will happen normally we do and there's a difference, especially in the Western world and the European or the North American one, but all of a sudden we are sharing what the whole world perhaps has shared for a much, much longer time that we do not know what it is that lives can end based on a handshake that medical and health conditions do matter that reactions from our government really, really matter. And in the US we have this catastrophic situation not only the pandemic lay open, the disaster of one of the highest numbers in the world, especially of course in New York City where we have 5 million people going in and out of the subway every day and almost a million coming out and in from Penn Station and the Grand Central. So everything that makes our city great works in the moment against that and we have to see what happens, stores are closed, theaters are closed, businesses are closed over a quarter if not more of the American population is out of work. It's an unprecedented situation. The first curfew since World War II has been announced and on the streets for very, very good reason is anger, uproar and an expression of rage against conditions we have been living with or accepted perhaps for too long. It is something we all have to think about and yesterday we had three Israeli playwrights in Jordan and so Malz, the great writer said, it is encouraging to know that a life does count, that it does matter. And I would like to share a statement that came out from the public theater. Oscar Eustis also was here with us. He actually also had the COVID virus and spent a night in the hallways in the Brooklyn hospital, not knowing if he would survive, but here is the statement a bit adapted. So the murders of George Floyd, Amoudd Arbery, Tony McDate and Breonna Taylor have demonstrated in horrific fashion the racism upon which our country was spilled. We mourn the loss of these black women and men and we are grieved and outraged by their death. Theater is for, by and of the people, yet it has taken us far too long to proclaim that simple truth, black lives matter. We must stand in solidarity with the black artists, black staff members, the black community and all communities of color. We must do more, much more to fight the racism that infects every institution in the country, us at city university included. We must recognize that this is a time of change and that we have to be part of the change we want to see and we have to be part of the fight for that change. We need to live up to our own ideals. We, ourselves, have to change in an authentic way. Next week, we have a lineup with New York artists, mostly normally, it's one out of the five days is from the U.S. but still we have the new black fest here and many others before Giordano della Cruz and others. So next week, we have Jonathan McCrory from the National Black Theater and Ngozi Anianwou, James Scraps and Tamela Woodard. We have in between the great philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy from France who will join us and maybe he will be able to give us some thoughts to create meaning. Then we have Nigel Smith from the Great Flea Theater and Woody King who has run the new federal theater for over 50 years. So it's going to be an important week of reflection. Just to mention that we also got a post from a New York actor about our Segel talks and he said, who cares about this, about your talks right now, people are dying, be part of the conversation about justice and basically saying we should stop. In one way, he's right, it's true but it's also not true and he's wrong. We do need to care and we have listened to our friends and colleagues from Hong Kong, speaking of Abraizans and Haiti, Brazil, Lebanon, South Africa, the shootings of demonstrators in Chile, the police beatings of Roma and Romania and also their struggle is our struggle and actually America should turn away from isolation, away from nationalism and it is perhaps also part of the problem. It is not right to sing what happens here, counts so much more than around the world and because we do listen to our colleagues in Lebanon, Egypt and Brazil, we have even more reason to be really outraged at the murder of George Floyd. There's universal injustice out there over centuries, it's a war and perhaps war is more the given situation than the peace but America is no exception to it and it really should be. America should be an exception, it should not be here and America itself is not living up to that promise it offers. We talked also to Ralph Pena from the Asian American MyEase Theatre Company this week so I felt it's important to keep up our conversations but it is true for centuries the black community has suffered much more than others in this country and it is happening again in this moment, not only the coronavirus kills them so does the radical and racial politics in the US, social and economic inequities including poor access to healthcare, discrimination in healthcare settings, greater reliance on public transportation, higher numbers in healthcare jobs and service industries and differences in employment and the level of employment so are all leading factors why the numbers of deaths in the black community so much higher than in the white community and we have a president who refuses to wear a mask like everybody else, he suggests we should inject ourselves with disinfectant, he is hiding in the White House in a bunker when there seems to be a protest outside and he suggested the US military that is there to protect American people from harm and he is supposed to protect American people from harm he is suggesting that they should shoot at protesters and he is holding up a Bible in front of a church after police clears way for him so really peaceful protesters, it's outrageous it has to stop, he has been called a mass murderer because of his failed politics, he owned that program and I think it is time to change, this needs to change and I think also it will change and we in our theater performance community have to look hard what role theater and the arts can play should play and will play in the real, the symbolic and the imaginary and we need to see how artists in other countries are dealing with civil uprising, the refugee crisis authoritarian regimes, censorship and police killings in Egypt, Lebanon, Cuba, Brazil and it's important to find out how South Africa for example in the years of apartheid how did artists like Basil Jones and others how did the markets theater, how did they react what did they do, what worked and what role did theater play and how did they contribute to change and what we're hearing they really, really did contribute to change the world, focus of it and this also will and should be the case here in America one of the countries also very much in the headlines but has a little bit more out but coming back to it is Greece the geographical nearness to the African and also Arab countries where the refugee crisis because of political situation is so dire so disastrous, Greece has gone through a lot not only financial history of it but also struggling with adapting into European Union but also it's a country that gave us an idea of theater everybody still talks about we all learn about, we all admire, we think about even so we don't know enough about it perhaps it was more black Athens theater than we thought Richard Rechner reminded us and but it is close to the idea of democracy in only forms, the idea of theater as a place in a community, in a society, in a theater that was close to the gods and where it was part actually of a daily life and perhaps not yet looked at as an art form before we start to talk with Avra, Cedru Polo and welcome and thank you for taking the time to stay with us I also would remind all our viewers it's today the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising, the bloody, bloody uprising in 1989 over 30 years ago, it was a bloody Grektown and people died, students died and also the loss of these lives are not forgotten and you might forbid and censor what's written in ink and online and literally but blood cannot be erased someone said and that's blood loss, it does count and we all remember it I know that in Hong Kong yesterday demonstrators were defying orders not to demonstrate so thousands were on the street in Hong Kong and Haifai Wu who was here from the Penns Theater in Hong Kong a great theater artist said, we are all worried here what will happen to us, to our free speech and he says June 12th will be also a big day there where the protests began a year ago and here they are also struggling how to react as artists so Avra, welcome on our program how are you, where are you and what time is it? Okay, first of all, thanks very much for having me in this wonderful series I am very happy to be here to be here at this moment in time and to talk about Greece, my country of origin and a little bit about Cyprus which is where I've been residing for the past few years so basically I'm in Ecosia Cyprus at the moment and it's 7.11 pm at the moment so it's getting progressively dark but the internet is bringing us all together so it doesn't really matter where anybody is I feel very much a part of New York and what's going on in the United States at the moment Are people following in Greece what's happening on the streets in New York? Oh, absolutely, people have been protesting in Greece especially last night there was a long protest about the killing of George Floyd and there was a protest that arrived and stopped in front of the US Embassy in Athens and there were a lot of people involved because Greeks are extremely political people and they're all for justice we've suffered enough from different kinds of crisis but racism is ever present as a threat in Greece, in Europe as much as in the United States it's something that really concerns all of us so yes, we have been following and we've been very much trying to find a voice to speak about all these problems all these huge injustices that have been also revealed because of the coronavirus somehow this pandemic has exposed many of the inequities that have perennially tortured a great part of the world How did it play out in Greece? Tell us a bit Well, the pandemic, we've been for a change we've been lucky enough not to have had a big outbreak I think for the first time we all Greek citizens felt protected by the states which took measures very, very fast as soon as the first surge of new cases started in Greece the schools closed down immediately businesses closed down we were not allowed to go out at all just once a day and we had to text the government to get special permission I think the state handled the whole crisis pretty well in fact and they had a good reason to do that because as a result of the long financial crisis in Greece which started in 2009 and went on for about 10 years actually the national health system had been extremely weakened so it was very important to do everything we could to protect the health system from being overwhelmed and so things went well I should say we didn't experience the amount of outbreak that we saw in Italy or in Spain and now things have gone back to a new normal which means that schools reopened businesses have reopened the public transportation is running and we are trying to get readjusted to this new normal this new reality which means we are pretending life has gone back to being what it used to be but also trying to be very careful we have to wear masks and all that but I'm grateful for the Greek government for doing a lot to protect the people and as I said this is a new thing for us we've normally felt exposed in every big crisis that has occurred in Greece so far so you had an early lockdown so how many weeks were you under lockdown or when did it open up again? well I was in and I've been in Cyprus since mid-March when the lockdown occurred both in Cyprus and in Greece things kind of happened concurrently and things have been unlocking so to speak in the past couple of weeks so basically we had a solid two months of straight lockdown where nothing could be done and we had to work from home our children were at home it was a difficult time, very challenging and now as I said besides schools and businesses reopening now the tourism industry which is a big thing for both Greece and Cyprus is about to restart whatever this means for the epidemiological factor whatever that's going to do to the health of people but still hotels are opening airports are opening now in next week so flights all over the world are resuming so we'll see how that plays out how was the atmosphere in Greece during lockdown what was on people's mind? what was on your mind? well the beginning was troubled because there was this pressure to do a lot to use the time to use the time to do research to use the time to create art to use the time to see your family after a while I realized that I could give myself permission to kind of be lazy and to let my mind detox from the small things of life so when you see so much pain around you and when the whole world is pretty much collapsing and you talk to your friends in Milan and they tell you that their grandparents are both in hospital with the coronavirus then you stop worrying so much about failing to be perfect and you stop worrying about your image and you know living up to what is expected of you and you start being more forgiving of yourself for not delivering, of others for not delivering so I kind of enjoyed that luxury of pause I felt it was a good alibi for me to go deeper and to let my mind wander to places that normally I wouldn't have had the time to wander in it was very quiet everything was extremely quiet you couldn't hear anything but the sounds of nature and the birds singing it happened right in the middle of spring where everything was, nature was kind of blooming but there were no cars in the streets no people out and we were all living together and for me that meant being in an apartment with my husband and my two sons one of them being a very moody teenager and the young one, a first grader that I had to homeschool so that was like another difficulty in getting things done but somehow when you accept the chaos of this the newness of this the temporary quality of that because you have to you know think that this will end at some point then you accept that this is a kind of war and I kept thinking about my grandparents and my parents even who experienced World War II what was life back then without the internet without being able to connect to people to follow what's going on in other places to know that you're not alone in this but people are suffering too so I was practically glued to my computer screen at all times it became an extension of me and I didn't do much in terms of academic writing or the big research that a lot of people said they have been doing but I was following the news reading international papers and talking to people my friends, my family in Greece my sister in Turkey my friends all over the world and connecting through the net which is good and watching a lot of theater online obviously so that's how the situation was and now we are finally able to resume our activities and our lives so you see a little bit of light after those times you talk about dark places places you normally don't go to what are those places that you feel or share with? Once you stop producing you start imagining and those dark places are the places of deep emotion that you normally never have time to think about and you feel very sometimes hesitant and embarrassed to express to other people but now that we're all suffering this very raw very new global affliction there's no reason why we should be so apologetic or so embarrassed and the dark places are the places of loss and facing your own mortality and knowing that your parents are elderly and who knows what's going to happen next and thinking about your position as an artist and the kind of theater you've been making what you wanna do now which is not necessarily a dark thing but it is a spot of reflection and something that you really must acknowledge if it's right there in your face staring at you, it's the elephant in the room what do I do from now on to make the world a better place to make it more just to help my audiences that the theater community to deal with things that have been left ignored for a long time so this is the kind of dark that I'm talking about not necessarily bad dark but something that is buried underneath a lot of in essentials that needs to come to the surface in theater you have to confront what you're doing what you haven't been doing what you did right so what are your thoughts and what came to your mind in your own? Well, I think theater will change and I'm not just talking about the practical aspects of it we don't know how many seats the theaters are going to be operating with there's been talk of like a 40% capacity in the theaters or wherever the aisle seats are going to be and all that no, I think the theater will change and return to the basics which is bodies breathing together in the same space and stories that are important for everybody universal stories need to be written now and I'm a huge proponent of visual theater and this is the theater that I've been doing in my own practice and what I really like to watch but somehow I believe it's no longer about aesthetics it's no longer about production values there's got to be something that connects audiences and artists on a more fundamental level and this is stories and emotions being shared so I think a lot of new plays will be obviously coming out of these very dark times and perhaps more agonistic practices more practices that involve the audiences more I mean, in Greece it's been happening over the past 10 years because we have experienced a huge crisis and as a result of that a lot of new participatory forms have emerged in Greek theater and I think theater is moving to that direction entering the public sphere and no longer staying away from society it's reclaiming the right to ask the big questions unapologetically and bring us face to face with our responsibilities, our civic responsibilities our individual, private, professional responsibilities Yeah, perhaps next to Venezuela, Greece was the country the world worried most about financially and what happens now in the US makes that look like perhaps not as deeper crisis as it once was in Greece but still it was a very severe financial crisis you said theater changed already so what did theater artists do in Greece and in that outlook there will be no jobs there's no money, it's uncertainty you said you found new forms what happened in Greece? Back when the financial crisis started there were a lot of new companies small theater companies emerging and the new forms that occurred were basic cases of participatory and devised theater forms because I think a lot of that had to do with the need to express the urgency of the crisis so new texts had to be devised made up out of What were examples, for example of some of the companies or work where did they go? Well there was like Bleach's theater company in Athens that wrote new pieces and kind of worked as a collective that put up plays that had to do with the collapse of Europe and the idea of European solidarity being a joke and that was mostly operated back in 2010-11-12 which was the peak of the Greek crisis and then documentary theater became extremely strong addressing the refugee issue and of course Greece has been very strongly affected and kind of very, I wouldn't say badly but very strongly affected by the influx of refugees in the Greek islands so it was really wonderful to see that rather than turn their backs to the theater because of the lack of funding artists became even more connected to each other formed new companies and tried to reach out to those underprivileged groups and a lot of Greek artists like Yolanda Markopoulou and others have been working with refugees forming mixed companies with people from Syria and Afghans living in Athens and putting up shows that tell their stories tell us a bit about the work tell us a bit about these plays and work but how did this Greek theater community react to? Well the most amazing thing for me is that a lot of those stories were staged at the National Theater of Greece and this is a huge thing because obviously this is a reference point for our theater practice and they got a lot of people got money to actually stage plays, new Greek plays that were dealing with some aspect of the refugee and forced displacement issue like a lot of refugees coming to Athens and seeking shelter trying to adjust to a difficult life with very little money and also how the Greek society itself has reacted to the new multiculturalism that became the new identity of Greece so the National Theater took on several of these plays as did the Municipal Theater of Northern Greece organizing also a series of workshops involving people from the refugee communities who were able to work in the theater and put on not necessarily highly professional obviously shows but some examples of their own theater making it reminds me a little bit of Exil Ensembling the Gorky Theater in Berlin so actions like those were happening and also what played a very important role was that the Athens Festival the Athens and Epidorus Festival to be more exact was redefining its mission starting 2010 I think when George Lucas the then artistic director took over and things started having a more international scope there was an extra version that Greece needed very much at the time because it was at a very transitional place trying to redefine its identity with respect to Europe with respect to the world and trying to survive so what the Athens and Epidorus Festival did was invite a lot of people from a brought like Remini Protocol, Milo Rao they came to Greece several times and they put on plays that had to do with the new conditions forming around Europe and the world and political theater in the sense that audiences were no longer kind of passive spectators but became really part of what was going on asking to have an opinion and be part of the show also the Onassis Foundation we created the big cultural foundation called Stegi that again put a lot of money into inviting major artists from overseas to come to Greece and they either commissioned new plays or they just brought back shows that had been very successful in other parts of the world and in fact there is a festival, an annual festival called Fast Forward Festival organized by the Stegi of the Onassis Foundation that has a very specific political scope and again I'm trying to think Remini Protocol Akira Takayama from Japan a lot of artists that have a new way of seeing theater not just as a storytelling machine but an interdisciplinary art that involves different parts different arts and different parts of the world multicultural and theater there is a research machine they were coming to Athens and created things that made sense at the moment the peak of the Greek crisis that is stunning to hear and so did you feel that theater didn't make a difference in the life of the city you talked about the new identity of Greece it has happened did theater make a contribution? oh yes Greeks enjoy theater very much not just back in the ancient times but the Greek audience is a very involved audience people love to go to the theater so I think it did make a difference because there is a younger generation of artists that were coming out of that crisis that were stuck in Greece with no money or with very little money with very few jobs and they created the so-called protest generation of Greece that went out in the streets collected people, gathered people together and brought them back to the theater to watch a different sort of performance what do you mean they collected people? well I mean a lot of the theater projects actually were site-specific projects and other projects were participatory projects tell us a bit about a specific project what they did? well I mean Prometheus in Athens which was remaining protocols project in 2010 gathered about 100 Athenian citizens trying to represent as many parts of the Athenian society as possible including illegal immigrants and brought them on stage to comment well starting from the story of Prometheus bound by Eskius talk about things like resistance, authority, violence and their experience of being part of this city at this time of turmoil another project was a play by by Greek player Dimitris Dimitriades called Petheno Sanhora the exact translation the literal translation dying as a country which was also a statement about Greece's afflictions and response to those afflictions historically through the ages and how the modern Greek identity is being shaped by those and it became a participatory project that was formed again by a very big part of Athenian citizens I can't remember the name we all had to stand in line and it was part of the Athens and Epidorus festival and feeling that we were all telling a story each had a line to tell all had to tell a story that had to do with Greece and its modern identity so these are two telling examples one by a Greek director Mikhail Marinos and the other one by a European collector and then there's a lot of plays whose subject matter is about the economic crisis the drain brain Greeks having to leave their country because we couldn't find a job I'm a victim to that myself I left Greece in 2012 for Cyprus which of course had its own history of crisis right after but a lot of Greeks had to leave Greece the country was deprived of opportunities people suffered people committed suicide there were a lot of a lot of new poverty in the streets homeless people and I think it's something that made us quite strong to deal with this current crisis, the pandemic and that's why I feel that we all share a sense of national pride having done well with the coronavirus staying at home when we're supposed to wearing a mask when we were supposed to and becoming obedient citizens to help each other survive incredible it's a great role in Greece in a proud way maybe not in that theatrical one but in a moment of real crisis the financial crisis was as real as it gets devastating the numbers of people out of work the city or the country turned to theaters we put money into theater festivals that old thousands of years old tradition to find a new identity did Greece really find a new identity? wow Frank I mean that question I think we've been more at peace with things recently in the past couple of years things seem to take us out of the heart of the financial crisis at least to some kind of normality I'm not sure we found a new identity I think the new identity is a recognition that we do have a special place in Europe both geographically geopolitically and historically speaking but also the sense that we are part of Europe and we want to be part of Europe and in fact we want to be global citizens so the extra version that occurred in the theater that I spoke of is I think part of our new identity and I'm talking about the younger generations of people who feel that their place is very much in Europe although truth be told there were very strong anti-European sentiments during the crisis because we felt that it was hard for a lot of member states of the European Union to understand where we were coming from and all the kinds of stereotypes that people think about Greece, Greeks are lazy they don't work, they just get sun and souvlaki horrible horrible things that for us who had been struggling to find a job being over-qualified for our parents who sold their pensions decreased by 40 or 50 percent those stereotypes were just really out of place but I think we've come to a new kind of acceptance of our unique place and again it's very much geopolitical you can change the fact that you're right there in the Middle East or at the very south of the border but the acceptance is that we want to be part of Europe and I think I hope we will stay a part of Europe and I hope Europe is going to be a more not helpful, just helpful but a better place for the Europeans and there's going to be more agreement and I think the coronavirus crisis has helped in that direction it seems that there are ways that Europe is dealing with a problem in a more united manner which is good which is great we now of course hear less about it because the newspapers of course are full of corona and now is that George Floyd's murder as someone said how can it be that everything that happens in the world always fits in one paper so we hear less about the refugees Alina of Lesbos and how is the situation and how is the corona situation there and are theater artists present? Over the peak of the refugee crisis was in 2015 and there were thousands of people arriving on the shores of Lesbos and Kos and Hios all you know in the Aegean Sea it's a very very tough thing to talk about it really creates a lot of pain to think of people being thrown out of their homes my kids in Cyprus go to school and there are a lot of refugees who came from Syria and Kurdistan and we know their stories so it becomes a thing that we all live with and we all have neighbors that are refugees and have arrived in Greece from all these troubled regions most of the people are locked into refugee camps in different parts of the country in the mainland of Greece and the islands so I don't know how this is playing out in terms of the coronavirus I know that the state is concerned and there has been help with the epidemiological team visiting those camps to help the people residing there under very very poor conditions things are not good I think the best thing about Greece is that we are also a nation of refugees and we've experienced a lot of struggle with that many years ago in 1922 when a lot of the Greeks were thrown out of Asia Minor on a personal level I think most of us do at least try and put ourselves in the refugee shoes I hope a lot of us do the state is still very poor there has been help from the European Union to support the infrastructures of the camps this is far from ideal and I think there's got to be more solidarity from Europe there's got to be more equal sharing of responsibility because this is a problem that is not just a Greek problem it's a global problem and we all need to be equally helpful, equally there to support those communities now in terms of the theater as I said there has been a lot of activity revolving around subject matter of refugee lives and groups working and involving refugees but as we speak theater artists are very numb because a lot of them are out of work and there's a lot of insecurity about the future we don't know when theaters will actually be truly operational again so not much is being done to that direction, there isn't much activism to help again those groups integrate artistically also in a theater environment we're just hoping things will get better soon so that the exchange of ideas, exchange of help and practical help will start pouring out again numbers are quite big of the camps and Europe leaves Greece, perhaps also in the way Turkey leaves a bit alone because of the geographical closeness of course they are affected well because there's no also land border it's very easy for certain countries of Europe to say I'm putting a wall up and that's it and no refugee can enter, this is my place this is our country, we want to keep it pure we can't just leave people drown there's no way, we wouldn't do that but also from a logistical point of view there is a sea border which is no border no actual strong border and yes Turkey has played a part in that as well it's a whole different issue it is just for Americans perhaps also not as present but families from Syria and other countries who risk their own lives the lives of their children to go on small boats overly full to drown this is still better than staying and we as humanity in the history of mankind we have to be on the side of refugees Germany, especially a country where I come from we have a great responsibility also that has done to the world and I think it's twice to do it but I think we all need to understand and better what it really means there's shockingly no number of the US that were taken in as in 2000 or something compared to a million I mean half Germany alone and Turkey, Greece it is a beginning I think that we have seen now maybe one day it all will be connect all the dots of a world that is different and you yourself have you changed your work in theatre change and tell us a bit what you do I'm experimenting I'm trying to use the time to see how we can use new forms it's a game it's an experiment we don't know where that's going to lead I mean there's a lot of mixed media stuff that I find very interesting and I'm currently working on a new project adapting an American short story in a mixed media it's called the yellow wallpaper and it's about a woman who is isolated in her home and she starts having hallucinations but it turns out it's not that she's crazy but she is being fed certain ideas about your life and about yourself but I like the idea of using the motif of isolation to create something that uses animation and mixes with storytelling through voice-overs and not having actual actors on stage more like a little film so to speak I like to use technology a lot here's my work change I think as I said at the beginning it will change it will become more political I already feel the kind of the urgency to move to that direction more political in what sense more involving of the community in some sense less aestheticized in another sense more about being an outspoken statement or work that creates connections people from different parts of the world I already started talking to people from other places and I've worked with people from Turkey and from Iran and obviously you know a lot of western countries I think connections and intercultural exchange is our future that's the only way we can stop things like the murder of George Floyd because ultimately what the pandemic has done is acted as a catalyst to make us see that we're all human beings who are very vulnerable all equally vulnerable and all needing to come together to you know to tackle the huge inequities of the world injustice poverty I do think that theater has a place in that in making those statements clear and raising the voices of people putting up the questions and yes we are going through a tragedy but Aristotle said that tragedy is about understanding cause and effect because it does lead to a recognition and recognition leads to some kind of knowledge and self-knowledge so something good is meant to come out of this in some respect yeah this is a good way to think about it to see the cause and structures that cause or are connected to it that we're not able to prevent it to have such a do you feel that really hard crisis most probably no European country or western kind of went through that crisis do you feel it is in a better place now because of the crisis without the crisis it would have found its way this is one of the best questions that have ever been posed with respect to the crisis I don't know I think it has made us the financial crisis has made Greeks very resilient again it created a kind of solidarity amongst and especially the younger generations it made us look to the future to see how we can survive in this universe for many years for at least seven to eight years seemed extremely hostile to us, to the country I'm not sure we are at a better place obviously Greece was doing pretty well the crisis struck with the Olympics and a lot of European infrastructure and European money coming into the country a lot of people lost their jobs and their income but because I'm usually an optimist I think maybe what it has done is to besides making us more resistant and resilient as I said is to make us see that we can survive without a lot of money we can survive without being rich we can still have a good life and find meaning in things like friendship strong connection making art at a small budget it's all possible so that's good and we can still do that but that's speaking for again the younger generations it's been very hard for my parents generation who saw their income fall as I said maybe by 50% and a lot of people were driven to poverty but for the younger generations we are now more aware of what our position in Europe is and what kind of solidarity is needed to create the circumstances for improvement on a social level, on a financial level on an artistic level we're more connected to each other I'm speaking as an artist mostly in this respect and it seems the Greek state at the moment has taken some steps some measures to make things viable in the next few months because of course theaters closed in mid-March and a lot of people became unemployed it's been a support from the government I think it's about 800 euros per month for those employed in the arts, in the cultural sector and were forced to quit their jobs but also there have been other actions that the Ministry of Culture has announced for example there will be a lot of artistic events in over 200 I think archaeological sites in Greece in the summer because open air is the safest option obviously and we do have to take advantage of the cultural heritage so a lot of different initiatives will take place in the archaeological sites of Greece the state subsidies for small theater companies and the development of the building for 2020 and the period of implementation of this amount of money will be extended so there have been little things that are happening that are not going to solve obviously the problem there and then but are definitely going to help the landscape look less dismal than it could look in a different environment most Greek artists feel that we're at the good place because the government shows some respect and one of the biggest grievances that was holding both Greeks and Cypriots captive in the realm of culture was that art was not treated as a profession it was just treated as a hobby and this is happening in other parts of the world as well so what is happening in the two countries at the moment is a way a new system of implementing a so-called registry of cultural bodies and individuals that will kind of bring in everybody who has been employed professionally or semi-professionally in Greece and Cyprus so that people will be covered financially for a part of the losses they incurred when they lost their jobs because of the coronavirus so that's also very important and that's also something that brought the artists together this is in a wonderful way that somehow Greece is recognizing the contribution the artist community has done during the financial crisis the artists cared about the community and their country and that it is being honored it sounds monthly payments it sounds almost a paradisical idemic to us here just a few days ago the Metropolitan Opera announced it will not show anything till the end of the year maybe a new year's fundraiser artists haven't been paid even at the opera in March it's a free-land artist it's a disastrous and a terrible setting there's something to learn from I think also artists have really helped the city to come back in the 70s Hillary Miller's book about New York City and the arts makes a good point how much everybody left to do that maybe we have to think again how also New York City needs a celebration in the sense of festivals like like you put out so this is interesting to hear what solutions you found what you work in that actually an artist also in a country that struggles so hard now found away but it tells also a bigger story that something is working again to really take into account and I think we must also look outside from the American way of working living and producing art to find answers to things that could work and make a difference many of our talks it came up the idea to look back to mythical stories whether it was Indian puppet players you know Anarupa Roy whether it was just yesterday a Bruce Canner I'm looking at Hebrew myth of course for Don who talked about mythical stories you know its population Brazilian colleagues will be looking at Latin American mythical plays of course Greek is the mythical plays that are told have that played a role or was it more as you said it's a new work like the Romani protocol inspired Milo Rao inspired we working adapting so what worked for the longest time we Greek artists felt it was a responsibility to change the big classics the big Greek works so I think every self-respecting artist had to take on one of the tragedies and there is a very troubled relationship that we have with our past a sense of guilt a sense of awe at the same time because we are as I said a very transitional space a liminal space where we are redefining the identity as artists in Europe and the world there's been a desire to deconstruct many of those plays and deconstruct the stories and that has informed I think the greatest part of the last decade of the 20th century and maybe the beginning of the 21st but now it's more about something else I think now without disrespecting or ignoring the Greek plays or the Greek myths I think most younger artists are involved in the new stories the identity of modern Greece which is a very different thing altogether it feels very a far cry from our glorious past into a country in turmoil that has had to go through a lot of shit forget my expression from the world so there is a lot of desire to create new stories not necessarily adapt the Greeks that has been happening obviously as a matter of course the Athens and Epidors festival always stages a couple of Greek tragedies every year so that is the agenda it still holds in the agenda but even if we adapt from the Greeks it's usually like things like monologues mixed media plays I myself worked on the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra in a production that I staged in London last year in 2019 which used a lot of video mapping to create visually the absent roles that were in conversation with Phaedra so I use that more as an excuse although I love the story to experiment with form because there's something beautiful about those plays that are open to so many different interpretations and directions and that's why they have survived through the centuries but speaking about Greek modern Greek productions now the ones that make it to the National Theatre or the Onassis stage I think there's plays about how Greeks deal with leaving their country about the influx of the refugees one of the most successful experiments was production by Onassis Azaz he's worked in Germany a lot so you might have heard of him and they did a play called Clean City which used the stories of the cleaning ladies working from different parts of the world not just Europe but other places too who have made a living in Athens and those people were actually on stage amateur performers telling their stories in Greek it was an extremely moving production and I think that's the kind of thing that we can identify with at the moment it's also very interesting I also like the idea of the government or whoever is in charge to say let's go back to archaeological sites but make new stories that idea to go back to history connect to it but create something that perhaps is not a Karaoke version and we talked about that when he said why do we do karaoke often it's not as good as the original why don't we do something new we have to sing our own song Robert Wilson often said everybody wanted to sing Barbara Streisand he said sing your own song and it was to engage with a book by Patrick Boucheron a French historian who wrote the history of France but seen as a history outside the national focus France always was a country of immigration always was a country open to influences always important things always people moved in and through and out and to remind people out of centuries of this and they re-enacted or read some of that in America for the Americans to look back the history of racism the history of struggle for freedom liberties and what it offered a unique opportunity so that is quite stunning so in the time you spend in your corona time were there books music paintings was there something that inspired you that you connected to on a very deep level the stories of the people all over the world I had no desire for big literature so to speak and I'm embarrassed to say that but I really devoured everything that was about people suffering in Brazil in London in New York so that became my daily focus the internet became a hub of emotions and it became an eternal and always alive now of things so I wasn't I wasn't I mean I was reading through a lot of things about tragedy and very eagletons violence and also one of the things that made a big impression on me was Judith Butler's precarious lives in which she talks about what makes a life grievable and what lives are worth are worth living and what is our position you know citizens to what violence does to people and who deserves to die who deserves to live so I think that was something that I would single out of my reading experience but as I said mostly it was about reading reports from what was happening globally at the time and especially the first part of the first month of the pandemic I was about to travel to Bologna and a couple of days before my trip for a conference the northern Italy went on a lockdown so everything was cancelled and I have a lot of friends living in Bologna and Milan so we talk about this crisis every day and that I would connect to my readings on tragedy and as I said Terry Eagleton Judith Butler these were definitely big thinkers of the century and what we're going through now but going back to what you said about revisiting the past I think there is this is a solution for America for Greece for most countries in fact to make that bridge that connection between past and present and we learn from the past but then we change in the present and I think this is what theater can also do to return to those stories those forms those archetypes they're very important and use the wisdom and the universals of the archetypes and transform them into daily modern-day life modern-day conditions modern-day struggles I think for Greeks especially this has a very particular value we need to get read of that the one hand nostalgia for our glorious past that no longer is but at the same time reconnect with it and some different level but would allow us to move on through history feeling independent and worthy of something there were times during the financial crisis when we were being bombarded with those horrible impressions that the world had about Greeks we felt that maybe there is a truth to that we question ourselves and I think we're beyond that now and having that sense of connection to our past is important but also being able to carve out a future goes different ways coming closer to the end of our conversation really thank you for sharing it is important to hear us from you or from Greece from a country that went so deep very very dangerous existential crisis and that's something that's in front of us so to hear what happened what worked and what came out of it I know you also teach so what do you say to young artists in general maybe also artists right now who see the images of George Floyd repeatedly on the streets the demonstrations and what do we do what are we how are we supposed to engage with this world to create meaning and what did corona teach you what do you tell a young artist who comes to you in your class and says you know what's I'm work the world is uncertain I don't I'm not fully sure how what to do what is important to focus on emotions and be unapologetic about expressing them on stage so much of with theatres malaise I would call it has been about formalism and anti-formalism often and we need to go past that and engage with our emotions and engage the audience through the emotions and I think that's the only way we will survive this pandemic as artists because we have experienced a lot during the pandemic there has been a lot of pain thankfully well so far I don't know of any people personally but one who who died from the corona virus and the country wasn't as much afflicted but I know that a lot of other countries have suffered a great deal of pain and we must be bold about expressing the pain it can be a violent cry it can be a kind of writing that is disruptive and that is revolutionary it can be a manifesto put on stage but we should shy away from creating spectacles and turn back to making theatre that's what I tell my students be bold be daring and don't apologize for being passionate to go away from the spectacle from the big thousands of shows to deal with emotions and not just the feelings the emotions that underlie the feelings I mean that's a very good advice and valuable also for us from me and I'm also sure for our listeners and to get in touch with these emotions this is truly my opening and also the question of Europe of course Greece for you even thinking are we want to be part of Europe Europe didn't want us and there's a big question of course the European Union it's founded on economic ideas and I think many have said early on on Polish or Habsburg said that you cannot find on an economic premise if the economy will go down this will fall apart the ideas of nations are based on a French Revolution of the American Revolution or mythical stories of states itself and Foucault suggested if I remember that right he said you know what really is the western world who are we with our ideals how do we go from what he does talk about the odyssey about Ulysses the stories of them we are close to them and this is the history in a way of a western world in there perhaps later on the authoritarian mess that King Arthur had the nights around the table and everybody has to be on its own and kill the dragons and come back and talk about it but I think that the stories that came out there are with us even if they are newly interpreted and directly connected and it is what gives us the ideas of a democracy of enlightenment and theater has been part of the struggle of that complex struggle and that complex history of freedoms and the history of liberties and we have to be a part of it and also the theater community in the United States will have to rethink as you all did what to do and I think the advice you got from the theater makers to say engage with communities go out I think recently they dragged them in and they will include them, have the people, the cleaning ladies are themselves there and the people on Ethens were in the great Romani project and Daniel Bensel talked a lot about it when he came to the Seagal so they are real possibilities and also I understand right from you theater and performance had a crucial impact on that dealing with the moment finding meeting and now also the state finds way to make sure that we are in the right place and thankfulness to artists in the time of Corona so this is truly a great contribution thank you for taking the time for talking to us it was so beautifully presented and I think it's going to make me think a lot and also somehow some positive news or some things that perhaps could be part of the discussion but really thank you for that tomorrow we have actually Tata with us a young director actually also coming out of the Columbia school as you also came out of that we had Anne Bogart here with us and actually was directing Carol Churchill's Mad Forest the play perhaps the best play about the uprisings in Eastern Europe the killings on the streets demonstrations by that deep split in the society and she was faced should be stop the rehearsal and just go home we find to do something with a Gideon Lister invited her Gideon at Bart College and said whatever you do and we will pay you which is wonderful and she said let's find a way and together with computer coders and some software engineer she created a way to have a live performance a sense of a graphic novel that was a piece of art I thought it's perhaps a one way to also address the situation and I think they also thinking about giving workshops how to use that software especially small companies because it is of significance that we find ways that theater artists can work that they're employed that they make money and that they continue and their work and their mission and now also really shows who wants to do theater commercial theater has shut down but many people are engaging deeply and as you also did so again thank you so much so tune in tomorrow for our next week again please do join us for Jonathan McCrary and and the National Blacks James Nigel Woody and and everybody and also the great Jean Luc Nancy I it's a big honor for us to have him here and he will talk I think about art it's an open conversation also art and the times of corona and the times of uprising and so thank you and thanks for our listeners to stick with us we again went a little bit over time and for how long for hosting us every day wonderful CRBJ Travis my single team Andy and of course to the viewers for really for taking time for listen to artists from around the world they also have an audience but it's also important for us because what artists go through their experience their meaning they find they have been on the right side of social justice of the right side of history early on always and I think so we should really and have to listen to them and so are you a part of that thank you so much and to our viewers stay safe stay tuned join us tomorrow if you can and of course next week it's a very important and significant week and what's happening now on the streets and America is of significance it's something that is changing or maybe things already have changed revolution start when things perhaps already have changed and so but we have to work for it so thank you and goodbye thank you Frank goodbye thank you